


A Scandal in Florin

by antietamfalls



Category: Princess Bride (1987), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Princess Bride Fusion, Buttercup!John, Fluff, Humor, Kidnapping, M/M, Romance, Swordfighting, Temporary Character Death, True Love, Westley!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antietamfalls/pseuds/antietamfalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A classic tale of true love and high adventure. Fusion with The Princess Bride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hedgehogandotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgehogandotter/gifts).



> This AU has been successfully done, I’m sure, by a number of fantastic authors. I must confess I don’t particularly care about that. What began as minor stress therapy has found a new purpose; I’m writing it now for [hedgehogandotter](http://hedgehogandotter.tumblr.com/), who is going through a tough time with unbelievable courage. I hope this gives you a smile, hedge. 
> 
> While it’s not entirely necessary to have seen the movie or read the book prior to diving in, I am primarily writing for an audience familiar with the source material. That means the big reveals will not be strung along like in the original. That said, certain things are very different and I aim to surprise everyone here and there.
> 
> -antietam

When John Watson sailed off to fight for Florin in a faraway land, the deepest love in all the world belonged to a wealthy raja of a princely state in northeast India and his newest young mistress. To show his love he showered her with Nubian gold and Persian silks and jewels larger than a man’s eye mined from his very own quarries, declaring no luxury too grand for his beloved. But the raja’s wife and other mistresses were jealous women, and upon seeing their lover’s favor for the youngest among them decided to take matters into their own hands. The monsoon rains came unseasonably heavy that year, and as the slow procession of the raja’s court traveled through the verdant river valleys to their palatial summer estate, the women saw their chance. A staged accident knocked the poor girl into the water’s flow and quickly swept her away, never to be seen again. Despite her death, the raja’s love for her held strong -- up until a rival potentate’s attractive daughter arrived for the funeral. Their flirtation began before the funerary rites were even read.

When John was injured in battle and drifting in and out of consciousness, the reigning love was a forbidden romance between a disgraced samurai and a daimyo’s daughter. After years of fleeting glances and adoration from afar, together they fled the girl’s strict father into the Hida Mountains. For a time they lived in unrivaled bliss, but the shame of stealing his love grew heavy on the samurai’s conscience. He collected a special root, boiled it into tea, and gave it to her one evening. As soon as the remedy had put her into a deep slumber, he delivered her back home in the dead of night and returned to the mountainside to end his own dishonor.

By the time John set foot once again on the shores of Florin, injured and weary and having convinced an old acquaintance, Master Stamford, to take him on as an apprentice physician in his countryside hospital, the deepest love was shared by a blind governess and her widowed employer in a large house overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Theirs was a quiet love, by necessity unspoken, as she hailed from the common class and him from the nobility. Although her high-born patron and his two children adored her, society would not allow for them to marry. A more fitting match was made and the gentleman was wed to a spiteful heiress from across the sea. They could do nothing and so their silent love continued on, and perhaps it would have indefinitely held first place if not for an upstart competitor soon to come blazing into the field. 

John did not know it, but the moment he and Sherlock Holmes set eyes on one another they debuted at twenty-seventh place in all the world.

Their first encounter came four days after John’s arrival to train with Master Stamford. Though by far the eldest apprentice, John was also the newest, and so during his first weeks he worked long into the night changing linens, fetching water, and tending to all the otherwise unpleasant tasks assigned by the higher-ranking apprentices.

On his fourth evening, John was in the midst of fumbling with a heavy medicinal tome that one of the physicians requested he locate. It was a noteworthy distance from the library to the patients’ ward and as John carried it down the hall, trying to keep the weight of the book off his still-tender shoulder, his attention was diverted by a sharp thwacking sound. Being, as it was, a strange noise to hear in the middle of the night, especially so far from the patients’ ward, John paused to listen for only a few seconds before his sense of curiosity got the better of him. He followed the noise, lugging the massive book all the while, until he saw a wedge of light spilling from a cracked doorway.

The equipment room was a seldom-visited area meant to store horse tack and spare parts for wagons. John nudged the door open as the thwacking continued and peeked inside to see who the devil would be awake and working at such a ridiculous hour (besides him, of course, but that didn’t count). Inside, to his surprise, John spotted the yeoman farmer who not two days ago had taken up one of the beds in the ward. The man, who sported a reputation for slobbish drunkenness, had been found unconscious outside a tavern. Apparently his malady had got the best of him, because he now lay on the workbench, stiff and stripped and face down, while a tall thin man with a head of dark curls unrepentantly flogged his corpse with a strip of leather.

John had heard about Sherlock Holmes from the others, of course. He was the peculiar man who, in return for access to dead bodies and their discarded parts, served around Stamford's hospital patching leaks, fixing broken tools, and seeing to the lanterns. By the look of his coarse woolen clothes, he was equally as poor as John though significantly more meticulous in his presentation. Almost everyone had warned John to stay away from the reputably prickly man, and while they had acknowledged his off-the-charts intellect, it was regarded as yet another flaw against his character and strangely at odds with his chosen line of work.

As John watched Sherlock thrash the dead yeoman, he couldn’t quell his curiosity. What in the bloody hell was he doing? What possible use could beating a dead body provide? And then he noticed it: a faint purpling of the dead man’s skin, the way Sherlock was laying out the strokes in an even pattern. 

Sherlock suddenly stilled, strap raised for another strike, when he realized he was not alone. His head turned toward John and for an intimately long moment their eyes met, Sherlock’s fiercely intelligent and pale against his angular face. His hand came down slowly, attention stolen, as if sighting a specimen far more interesting than the bruised corpse that lay before him. The intensity of John’s intrigue sent a shiver of adrenaline up his spine. This was a man who knew exactly what he was doing and couldn’t care in the least what anyone thought of it.

“Ah. Sorry to interrupt,” John said awkwardly, caught high on the unexpected thrill of Sherlock’s rapt attention. He eyes fell to the corpse. “You might try lateral strokes if you’re looking to bruise. Saw a lot of black and blue soldiers hit that way. Painful, but I don’t think he’ll mind.”

Sherlock just stared at him so John pushed into the room, making sure to spare a small glance over his shoulder for anyone passing by outside. There was a reason Sherlock was doing this at night; mutilating fresh corpses wasn’t exactly smiled upon.

“I’ll show you. Hold this,” John said, trading his heavy book for Sherlock’s leather strap.

He demonstrated a few types of hits for Sherlock, explaining how the flat of a sabre or a pike might leave telltale strokes. For nearly twenty minutes he went on, describing the wounds he’d seen and how long they took to form, what treatments seemed best for healing and what worsened the injuries. John described the difference between surface bruising and the signs of broken bones or internal bleeding.

Sherlock said nothing during all of this, but his eyes traced every one of John’s movements, following along with a studied brow. Unnerved by the staring, John finally handed back the strap and waited for a response.

Sherlock took a long silent look at the body before returning his gaze to John. “You’re an idiot,” Sherlock announced at last, his voice surprisingly deep and his tone condescending. He tossed the heavy book back into John’s arms.

John blinked once, twice, then nodded and left.

That was the only thing Sherlock ever said to him. Over time, John came to realize that Sherlock spoke constantly to all the other apprentice physicians, and to Stamford, and to everyone else who worked on the hospital grounds. John often ran across Sherlock in the middle of long-winded arguments, proving his points with commanding feats of logic, arguing with anyone who dare voice a contrary opinion and picking them apart into finite detail. But when John interrupted, or came upon him alone and remarked upon the pleasantness of the afternoon, or looked up from a book to find Sherlock’s narrowed eyes set upon him, he only ever got one response: brows drawing together, a twitch of Sherlock’s lips, and “You’re an idiot.”

John told himself he didn’t mind. He had endured language far more foul and plenty of boisterous ribbing in the army, after all, but despite the rationalizations John found himself wishing Sherlock would at least treat him like everyone else. Even (especially?) if it meant being on the receiving end of those amazing deductions. John took to hiding behind bookshelves and doors whenever he heard Sherlock talking in the next room, listening to that deep, beautiful voice unleash – rather harshly, he had to admit -- the incredible thoughts in that even more incredible brain.

Things came to a head one afternoon while John sorted jars of ointments in the storeroom. As he worked, Sherlock’s booming voice suddenly rose on the other side of the wall.

“…obviously it’s mercury poisoning, you imbecile,” Sherlock was lecturing, no doubt at one of the other apprentices. “Look at the discoloration of the skin- no, _look_. Do you see that? It’s not scotomy…” 

Heart racing in excitement, John crept toward the tall shelves loaded down with potted remedies and began to climb, trying to hear better through the thin walls.

“…it’s not from fish. Are you really so slow?” Sherlock continued, growing annoyed. “If local fish were the cause do you think he’d be the only case? His wife’s obviously poisoned him. Yes, _intentionally_ …” 

Halfway up, John leaned in and put his full weight on the wood. The shelf beneath his feet creaked precariously, but John was so caught up in trying to hear Sherlock that he didn’t notice until the wood slipped free of its seating, sending its contents – and John -- crashing loudly to the floor.

John cursed as he watched a few pots roll to feeble stop, then cursed again when he realized Sherlock’s talking had ceased. He leapt to his feet and started collecting up the jars, barely getting an armful back up on a shelf before Sherlock pushed open the storeroom door to investigate the strange noise.

Sherlock’s face was largely unreadable. He silently took in the disarray before staring at John as if he had just caught a mouse in the pantry.

“Oh—I’m just—sorry,” John stammered, swiftly picking up the fallen shelf and setting it aside. “Sorry, I was just listening a bit. You’re so clever and I— I’ll just be going.”

Before John could squeeze past him and take his embarrassment elsewhere, something changed in Sherlock’s face. The afternoon sun peeking through the nearby window lit his pale skin and burnished his dark hair, and Sherlock stepped closer, inscrutable, to say the only thing John could expect to hear. “You’re an idiot.”

But this time, whether from the lighting or the shock of being found or some other inexplicable reason, John finally _saw_. Sherlock’s words were slower, somehow, and John realized they were spoken not with disapproval but amusement. The small twitch at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth was, in fact, a smirk of gentle fondness. The creasing of his brows underscored the soft longing in his gaze. John understood at last the true meaning of Sherlock’s words. _I love you_ , said his adoring eyes. _I love you_ , said his small, affectionate smile. _I love you_ , said the intimate angle of his head.

Time seemed to screech to a halt. Stunned by the epiphany, John made a brief choking noise and excused himself with as much dignity as one could muster, under the circumstances.

Once inside his chamber, John paced back and forth over the thinning hearthrug, collecting his thoughts to convince and re-convince himself of what he’d just seen.

Sherlock loved him. _Sherlock_ loved him. Sherlock loved _him_.

It made no sense. Sherlock disliked everyone. He’d verbally abused every person in the hospital, up to and including ailing patients and even Master Stamford himself (although, curiously, to John’s knowledge the epithet of ‘idiot’ was reserved for him alone). Sherlock actively avoided other people and regularly lamented the intellectual cesspool that was the human race. Ask anyone and they’d agree he was a cold-hearted, detestable man with no apparent joy in life beyond inflating his own ego at the expense of others.

Yet that was only half the story. Sherlock, though combative, was almost always right when it came to deducing others. His delivery was blunt but his facts spot-on. John admired his forthrightness and his refusal to abandon his arguments for the sake of placation. Sherlock came alive when fighting for his point, like some fiery hero from a storybook, and John couldn’t look away if he tried.

John considered all the hours he had spent watching and listening, hoping Sherlock would spare a glance, wishing for that searing attention to be laid on him as it had that first evening they met. He’d spent more nights than he’d care to admit wondering what Sherlock was up to, how his experiments were getting on, what his quarters looked like.

And as John thought more about it, he conceded that Sherlock really was quite beautiful, made of pale milky tones and flashing aquamarine eyes and shining chestnut curls. Despite his roughspun wool, it had to be agreed that Sherlock carried himself with an air befitting a nobleman and cut a fine, attractive figure indeed.

Sherlock was mad and wonderful, funny when he wanted to be, intimidating when he had to be. Nothing since the war had made John’s heart race like it did when he was around Sherlock. The bloody man hadn’t said more than the same three words to him since they met, and yet John yearned to hear them more than any others in existence.

The truth struck John in a stab of painful obviousness. Christ Almighty, he _was_ an idiot.

He loved Sherlock. _He_ loved Sherlock. He loved _Sherlock_.

“Oh my God,” John declared to the empty room. He looked to the door. “Oh my God.”

John did not know it, but he and Sherlock had just moved up to twelfth place.

Through the dimming afternoon light John ran, leaping carts and dodging pages and cutting over fence posts. He did not slow until the old misshapen hovel at the edge of Master Stamford’s grounds came into sight, and he did not stop until the oaken door barred his path and forced him to knock.  

The hovel door swung open to reveal Sherlock, his expression quizzical and his lovely self outlined by firelight from within.

“Er… hello,” John said. Head and heart buzzing in delirious rapture, he realized he had not actually prepared anything specific to say. “I just… came to tell you… um. I heard. I saw. And more importantly, I know. For the longest time I think I’ve known, but today my brain finally made the connection. It is the simplest of facts, now that I know it, and I am here to tell you that I love you, Sherlock. I do. I love you as the earth loves the rain, soaking it up and cherishing every drop. I love you as Master Stamford’s daffodils love the sun, tracking it across the sky as I have watched you all these months. Do these words please you? I will say it however you like, whenever you like, because as often as I do it will never be enough. Send me to Africa to get a drop of honey for your morning bread and I will gladly brave the danger with a smile on my lips. Ask me to stand barefoot on a mountaintop for forty days and forty nights and I will sing my love to the moon and the sun as they pass overhead. Shout at me, send me away, hit me, kiss me, I do not care. Just do something. I cannot keep this to myself. Please, tell me what you think?”

Sherlock slammed the door in his face.

Granted, it was the not the reaction John had imagined while coming to deliver his message. He stared at the scarred oak door for a long unpleasant moment, then turned around and went back home.

He lay quietly on his bed for a long time. He hadn’t been seeing things; Sherlock loved him in return, that much was obvious. But John wasn’t a master of deciphering human motivations, much less those of as marvelously unique a person as Sherlock, and so he rested and contemplated how very little his feelings had changed with Sherlock’s abrupt rejection. Bugger.

Around supper time John got up to light the candles and mull over something to eat, although he wasn’t all that hungry. His revelation about Sherlock had stolen away his appetite, like he was soaring off on some otherworldly plane and wouldn’t touch down any time soon for something as trivial as digestion.

That was when the knock came at his door.

John opened it, and there stood Sherlock.

A small, surprised “Oh-!“ was all John managed to get out before Sherlock shoved him against the door jamb for a heated kiss. Sherlock was on him and around him and against him and the world might possibly have been crumbling under John’s feet, because surely this wasn’t happening. Sherlock had turned him away. But the hot, wet, desperate slide of Sherlock’s tongue in his mouth quite opposed that theory, and John’s hands were looped around his neck and tangling in his gorgeous curls, and maybe John groaned a little because Sherlock’s lips curved into a wicked smile.

They knew then, both of them, that something unstoppable had been set into motion. Something colossal, life-altering, and ultimately inevitable.

And with that shared knowledge, Sherlock and John shot to first place. Not only did they take the lead, but they excelled so far ahead of the rest of the competitive field that the next five combined seemed pittance in comparison.

“Would you like to come inside?” John managed, his shortened breaths grazing Sherlock’s cheek. His heart was pounding so hard it threatened to drum right out of his chest.    

“More than anything,” was Sherlock’s reply, and oh, God, his _voice_. Speaking at John, _to_ him. John pulled Sherlock in again and did his best to taste the remnants of that voice on his tongue.

They made it across the threshold quite successfully and then against the paneling of the door, but there progress stalled for a not inconsequential length of time. Finally, with enough combined momentum they reached the wall and after some blind fumbling John managed to shut the door. It was fortunate they were not gilled creatures who lived in the sea, because if not for their lungs needing air the prospect of their parting looked rather grim indeed. But part they did, at long last, both of them gasping for air as they clung disbelievingly to one another, as if it all might be some elaborate illusion.

Sherlock blinked back into control and backed away from John with discernible reluctance, the same adoring smile from earlier gracing his flushed face.

John’s whole head felt foggy. He caught his breath and stared, dumbfounded, at Sherlock. “I thought- when did you-?”

“Sit,” Sherlock said, pointing to John’s narrow bed. It was only the fourth new word John had heard directed his way, but he was beginning to question the erotic effects of vocabulary upon him. Sherlock seemed to detect some of this because his smiled widened. “Now, John,” he said, slow and measured. John’s knees went gelatinous at hearing his own name spoken in Sherlock’s rich timbre and he was forced to sit for fear of falling over.  

Sherlock folded his hands behind his back and paced before the hearth, pink-lipped and just asking for another good snogging. It took a considerable amount of John’s self-control not to close the excruciating distance between them.

“Well. Now that that’s out of the way,” Sherlock began, appearing a little shocked by the overwhelming success of his advances. “I apologize for earlier, John, but you must understand. Your announcement probably felt logical to you, part of a natural progression, but for me it was all quite sudden. I never thought- no, no, let me rephrase that. I never _allowed_ myself to entertain the idea that you might feel for me what I have felt for you since the moment we met. It was too cruel, you see, to let myself dwell on anything resembling hope. And then suddenly you were at my door saying all those wonderful things, and I thought perhaps I had hit my head and fallen into a delirium. But the words kept coming and you were clearly quite real, and I did not understand. I could not process it. And then you stopped talking and you looked at me like- _oh_ , John.” His eyes grew saddened. “Like you were afraid I might say no. To you, of all people. It’s preposterous. You broke my mind and I couldn’t think. I just needed to _think_ about what was happening… so I did the only thing I could do. I cut off the stimulus. It was only later that I realized I might have left the wrong impression. So here I am to remedy that.”

“So you… do?” John asked, heart rising so far into his throat he thought he might choke on it. “Feel the same way, I mean?”

Sherlock came to kneel before him, placing his hands on John’s knees. “I love you, John Watson. Is that what you wish to hear? It’s in everything I do, everything I am. I love you with every part of me. My day does not begin until I see your morning smile. Did you know you’ve got one just for the morning? I cannot bring myself to return home until I see you each evening, tired but happy after caring for others all day, and I know for certain that you will sleep soundly that night. You are kind and good in ways I will never be. All these months I have wished to impress you, and I admit to picking arguments when I knew you were in earshot. I could not bring myself to say anything to your face for fear I would betray my absolute devotion to you.”

John shook his head and laughed. “You called me an idiot every time we spoke!”

“That’s because you _are_ an idiot, John. You couldn’t see what I was so obviously trying to say.” He brushed a hand against John’s face and smiled. “It’s all right. I love you anyway.”

And Sherlock was so close that John had to lean in to kiss him again, the frenzy gone but the passion remaining as he took Sherlock slow and deep, fingers running through his hair. It seemed to John that his insides were flooding with pure love for the man before him, its consuming intensity liable to drown him where he sat. Surely a single person was not capable of such love? But, there it was within him.

“This is mad,” John whispered to Sherlock, nearly overcome. “We hardly know one another.”

“I learned all I needed the moment you came across me whipping a corpse and didn’t turn away,” Sherlock purred back. His hands slid to John’s waist, thumbing at the buttons of his trousers. “If only you knew what I felt when you stepped into my life without a second thought, trying to help me in my work. Looking at me with amazement rather than disdain.”

“But you _are_ amazing,” John said. “Remarkable. Astounding. Anyone who does not see it is blind.”

Words seemed to fail Sherlock. His bright, beautiful eyes watched John, free of the innate defensiveness that lit them when he looked at other people. And then his dexterous fingers were making quick work of John’s buttons and peeling away the cloth of his trousers, and John didn’t catch on to what was happening until Sherlock had ducked his head to take John half-hard into his mouth.

The sudden wet warmth took John by surprise – God, this whole day had taken him by surprise – and he moaned for the ecstasy of it, falling back in a daze as Sherlock lathed and worshiped him with his tongue. John keened and squirmed as Sherlock worked him, delving his twitching fingers into Sherlock’s soft curls and distantly deciding that Sherlock’s tongue gave his voice a good run for its money as his best oral feature.

The heat of Sherlock’s mouth receded and John whimpered for the loss, leaving him so hard it nearly hurt. John tilted his head up to see Sherlock had released himself from the confines of his trousers, giving himself a few impatient tugs as he clambered up onto the narrow bed. John greedily palmed Sherlock’s long torso as he came to loom over him, groaning Sherlock’s name as hot skin touched his own.

“John, John,” Sherlock murmured, grinding them together and nipping along John’s neck. “How I’ve wanted you. How I’ve loved you.”

They fell lost in one another, hands and mouths roving in desperate discovery, until warmth spread between them and their mutual cries of release melded into one. Thereafter they lay panting and lazily kissing as the sense of sealing some unbreakable pact washed through them both.

“Will you stay here with me?” John asked after a time. “Tonight, will you stay?”

“Tonight and always,” was Sherlock’s reply.

They passed the night in murmured names and shed clothing and long wordless kisses, declaring their love in every way possible.

 

* * *

 

Their affair blossomed as a flower in springtime, though Sherlock would not have imagined himself using such florid language to describe what, by all accounts, should have been a sideline distraction.

What had begun as a fixation with John exploded into an obsession, a spiraling descent of no return until John was as crucial to Sherlock’s daily functioning as his nightly studies. More so, in some cases, as when Sherlock realized he found John’s living body decidedly more interesting than Stamford’s deceased ones. Sherlock burned for him, physically _ached_. He might have controlled himself before, but now every time John’s face glowed with quiet adoration upon seeing him, or John looked at him with more praise in his eyes than words could ever convey, or when John sank desperate into his touch, there was nothing for it. Sherlock was utterly lost to him. 

John, wondrous John. A golden beacon in Sherlock’s sea of night. Stubborn but tender, small but strong, hot-tempered but compassionate, John had healed and fought and spilled his blood so others might live. What’s more, John did not understand just how terribly perfect he was. Sherlock wanted to construct a mirror for him to see it, see how no lovelier a thing existed and the unbearable travesty of how poorly the world had treated him.

Sherlock kept most of these thoughts to himself as they learned each other and taught each other, until John’s body and heart became as familiar as his own. Amazingly, Sherlock’s interest only cemented itself over the days and weeks, as if John had found a home inside him he was always meant to fill.

His days belonged to Stamford, so Sherlock took his nights with John any way he could get them. On evenings when John was assigned the night shift watching over patients, Sherlock chose to curl up in the corner of the ward, preferring John’s presence to the meager comforts of a mattress. Still, nights that were theirs, and theirs alone, proved the best times of all.

The early pre-dawn hours of one particular morning found Sherlock nestled with a slumbering John under the patched blankets of Sherlock’s bed. His small hovel was creaky and drafty, but its wide bed (made by Sherlock himself) fit two people very nicely and the distance from any neighbors who might overhear (or interrupt) them was ideal. Sherlock had spent most of the night thinking, as he often did when sleep refused to come, though the added bonus of John’s warm skin pressed to his did not make for an unwelcome predicament.

What a strange tapestry fate wove, Sherlock thought. If it weren’t for John, he’d have long since departed Stamford’s hospital. There were other places to go, other things to learn, other great minds to study. The wanderlust and thirst for knowledge that had so far steered Sherlock’s life paled in the presence of one singularly remarkable person. Any future without John skirted the unthinkable.

John breathed softly against his neck, even and undisturbed, as Sherlock’s fingers trailed absently through strands of his blond hair. He envied John’s simple brain every now and again; his ability to compartmentalize sleep and work and thought, though limiting, had its upsides.

The streams of thoughts keeping Sherlock up were not new to him, having grown increasingly troublesome in recent days. He couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be something else for John. Something better. Not just a drifting outsider who got his thrills experimenting on corpses in the middle of the night, but someone in whom John might one day take pride.

A gentle sigh brought Sherlock back to the present. He looked down and found John’s eyes open, revealing the dark striated blue Sherlock adored more than any other shade. The backs of John’s fingers rose to tentatively graze Sherlock's chin. “What is it?” John asked.

Sherlock kissed his fingertips. “Nothing. Return to your sleep.”

“I can’t possibly sleep when you’re thinking so very loudly,” John said with a yawn. He jostled to turn further on his side, sliding an arm around Sherlock’s bare waist. “So, what is it?”

Perhaps the moment had come. Sherlock knew he couldn’t keep it to himself forever, not with time dwindling as it was. John waited for him to speak, his eyes soft and patient. Sherlock brushed a thumb over his lips. “I want to take you far away from here,” he admitted in a whisper.

John chuckled warmly. “And where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Away.”

John took up Sherlock’s hand and began rubbing soothing circles in the center of his palm. “You know I can’t, Sherlock. I already owe Master Stamford a small fortune for my apprenticeship. It will be years before I pay him off in full and I am free to leave.”

“I have a plan,” Sherlock said, clasping his fingers to stop John’s calming thumb strokes.

“What sort of plan?”

Sherlock’s eyes glittered in that way they did when he was preparing to reveal something important.

“Sherlock?” John said, growing serious amidst his confusion. “What plan?”

“News has reached Florin of an opportunity, John. The Governor of New France in the Americas has a mystery needs solving. A party of Jesuit missionaries has disappeared into the wilderness and it seems one of them was a cousin to the governor. If I sail there in time and find a satisfactory resolution as to their fate, the reward will be large enough to free us of our debts and let us settle wherever we choose.”

The arm around Sherlock’s waist tensed. “You intend to leave?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Sherlock sighed, lifting John’s chin to center his focus. “I want to leave with _you_. That’s the whole point, John. We need money to do that. This is just a detour.”

John was silent for a long while. “But I can’t go with you, Sherlock,” he pointed out eventually.

“No, you can’t,” agreed Sherlock. “You are Stamford’s collateral and it would be far worse for us if you ran away indebted. By the time I return your apprenticeship will likely be completed. I will pay Stamford the full sum he is owed and then we can go anywhere we please. Start a new life. A _real_ life.”

John went still and Sherlock knew he was imagining it. A logician with an international reputation, accompanied by a doctor, would be welcomed anywhere despite being strangers. They’d be tied down to no one and free to do as they would.

“I’m loathe to be apart from you, even for a day,” John finally replied.

“But think of it, John. Our own cottage. Goose down in the bedding. Fresh honey in the larder.”

That brought a small smile out of John. “Decomposing corpses out back, I’d wager?”

“Naturally,” said Sherlock, “but guarded from the wind so as not to spoil your breakfast."

“How thoughtful.”

Sherlock nudged closer, languidly tracing over the soft skin just below John ear. “Say yes, John. Let me make us a home.”

Obstinate as he was, John refused to let the petting sway him. His eyes seemed to weigh Sherlock as he considered his proposal. There was pain there, an unspoken wish that John could go along, as if convinced his presence alone could keep Sherlock safe.

“Nine months,” John said. “I’d expect you back with me in nine months.”

“Weather patterns over the Atlantic cannot possibly be predicted within such a narrow timetable-“

“Nine months,” John reiterated, using the tone that meant negotiation was not an option.

“All right. Nine months.”

John continued to mull it over, running his hands over Sherlock’s skin in a distracted sort of way. Any time John thought this long and hard about something, he was bound to reach an undesirable conclusion without a bit of influencing.

“You haven’t said yes yet,” Sherlock prodded.

A small hum rose indecisively in John’s throat. “When would you leave?”

Sherlock kissed him on the left temple, then the edge of his brow. “There's a ship departing in a fortnight.”

“So soon,” John said.

Sherlock trailed kisses over his eyelids and down his cheek. “Yes.”

“You’ll be careful? Nothing foolhardy?”

“You know me, John.” One on the tip of his nose.

“That’s why I’m concerned.”

At last reaching his mouth, Sherlock planted a deep, reassuring kiss. John finally let his guard down enough to relax into it, bringing up a hand to lightly touch Sherlock’s neck. He put everything he had into it, crowding out John’s hesitation and reminding him just how wonderful things would be when he got back. John’s hand tightened where Sherlock’s shoulder met his neck, and Sherlock knew he nearly had him. Sherlock pulled away, gaze locked onto John, and whispered, “I promise.”

John’s eyes had gone darkly aflame. “Then, God, yes,” he breathed.

The kiss renewed and intensified as John shifted on top of him. John was a fantastic kisser, he’d found (Sherlock had long since stopped wondering how he never tired of such a repetitive activity; he chalked it up to something he called “the John effect”), but there were two kinds of kissing from John. One was affectionate and quite lovely, while the other was also affectionate and quite lovely but with a hint of pent-up urgency, like a coiling spring, that invariably led to one of them receiving far more than a tongue in the mouth. If the switch in John’s kissing technique hadn’t been enough to alert Sherlock to John’s current intentions, then the line of heat from John’s groin against his naked hip might have done the trick. 

And indeed, Sherlock heard the soft scrape of the lid unscrewing from the vial of lubricant that perpetually inhabited his bed. He’d concocted the formula out of sheer necessity and now took to carrying it most everywhere in case he ran across John in the course of his daily work. John had no qualms about shagging in the fields, or the woods, or even in the stable lofts, although they’d startled a few horses that way.

Still preoccupied with his thorough exploration of Sherlock’s mouth, John guided his thighs apart, wriggling into a lower position as he lifted Sherlock’s right leg. Sherlock complied, shifting his hips the way John directed for ease of access. He’d learned not to question John’s anatomical knowledge. 

Slowly John kneaded him open, first with one finger then two, all the while peppering kisses down his bare chest and murmuring soft reverential words in his skin. Sherlock bore down on him as his arousal built, grunting his need for more contact, seeking to take John further into his body. John exhaled a humid laugh at Sherlock’s impatience and kissed him again.

“Have I told you how blissfully mad I am for you?” he rumbled into Sherlock’s flushing neck. John’s fingers finally pushed deeper, stroking inside him.

“Not today,” Sherlock panted. He gave a little shudder as his fingertips found the right spot and began massaging in earnest. John was remarkably good with his hands, and not just when treating patients. “But it’s not yet sunrise.”

“How neglectful that I’ve waited so long,” John grinned.

The heat and feel of John and his clever fingers were garbling Sherlock’s thoughts. A sheen of sweat slickened his skin, clinging him to John where they touched. He tried to stifle the moan building inside, quite unsuccessfully, as John’s unrelenting manual assault sent tremors up his spine. “While we’re on the topic of- _ah_ \- waiting…” Sherlock said, grinding down on John’s fingers to emphasize their inadequacy compared to the part of John he truly wanted.

“Always so demanding,” sighed John, kissing him over one eye. “I ought to teach you some patience.”

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock complained sulkily.

But John, inhumanly cruel as he was, refused to let up until he had Sherlock writhing and whining and reaching for himself. John blocked his hands and distracted him by applying the hot suction of his mouth all along Sherlock’s throat. Sensation seemed to blur together as all his ample brain power was overridden by John, John, _John_. He could live his whole life sustained on John alone. Swim in him, breathe in him, exist in him.

Sherlock recovered his thoughts only when John finally relented, kissing him soundly and removing his torturous fingers. “It’s all right,” John was whispering to him. “It’s all right, I know. I love you, too.”

He gently pushed back the damp tendrils of Sherlock’s fringe, and a confusing moment passed as Sherlock realized he must have been speaking quite without knowing it.

“John,” was all he could breathe out, heavy and desperate as he instinctively reached for the heat between them.

Adoration filled John’s eyes as he leaned back, taking hold of Sherlock’s raised leg with shaking hands to gently reposition it. Cool air touched Sherlock, wet and achingly empty, and he moaned aloud his need for John.

John entered him with an audible groan, so flushed with arousal that it was obvious he’d been testing his own self-control as much as Sherlock’s. The familiar burn of pain-pleasure rippled through his sensitized nerves from head to toe, lighting him up from inside to out. Nothing compared to being one with his beautiful John.

John began moving, as always so careful, so careful when starting Sherlock out.

“Harder, John,” he growled.

“Christ, let me feel you for a moment,” John huffed, bracing himself as he pushed in again. Beads of sweat trailed down his neck and he looked nearly done in. “ _Ah_ , God, you’re always just right. I’m not going to last long.”

“Neither am I, so _harder_ ,” Sherlock demanded.

John bent Sherlock’s leg higher to achieve deeper penetration, finally thrusting at an acceptable pace, the small pink protrusion of his tongue peeking from his mouth as he lost himself in concentration. Sherlock pulled him lower until John’s labored breathing came heavy in his ear. He closed his eyes and clung to his love, every stroke delivering him to his one true place of perfect, untouchable contentment.

Wrapped up in John in every way conceivable, Sherlock shook to his climax with an exultant cry, determined that John would always remain his.

 

* * *

 

The day of Sherlock’s departure arrived all too quickly. The sun shone bright in the sky as Sherlock said his brief farewells to the few at the hospital he had come to tolerate. Master Stamford provided him with a set of delicate steel-tipped medical tools and a small compass, accompanied by well wishes and hopes that he would return in due time.

The last to see him off was John, waiting patiently by the rough-hewn gate in his plain, frayed tunic.

Sherlock came to stand before him, his lovely John drawn even lovelier in the afternoon sun. The wind ruffled his short hair, cast luminous as spun gold in the sunlight. John’s distress was obvious by the tight line of his mouth.

Sorrow clenched at Sherlock’s heart. He had not thought how hard it would be to say goodbye to John. The logical necessity of leaving was undeniable, but the pain of it took him off guard. The mere thought of months without John suddenly seemed unbearable. What if John lost interest? What if some woman caught his attention or he left for elsewhere and Sherlock wasn’t able to find him-

A gentle hand took Sherlock’s own and Sherlock blinked away his crowding thoughts. John tilted his head a little, sensing that Sherlock’s brain had got the better of him and silently bringing him back to the present.

“Will you wait for me?” Sherlock asked, unsure he wanted to hear the answer.

The corners of John’s mouth twitched into a soft smile of reassurance. “Of course I’ll wait for you,” he said, weaving their fingers together. “I love you, Sherlock. You are the single most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. It doesn’t seem possible that I could love you as much as I do. Of course I’ll wait. Do you think this sort of thing happens every day?”

Sherlock lifted a hand to brush along John’s cheek, wishing he could take away the sadness in his eyes. He had never cared for money or reputation, but he would gladly pursue both to ensure that John never had cause to look that way again. He would do anything for John. Anything. The revelation that Sherlock could even feel that way was in itself miraculous, let alone the mystifying phenomenon of John loving him in return.

“No,” Sherlock finally answered. “I don’t suppose it does.”

John nodded with forced confidence, visible strain underlying his features. “Then fate must surely be on our side. I’ll be here, counting down the days until your return. Don’t be late, Sherlock, not even by a day, or I shall be very cross with you.”

“John.” Sherlock shook his head, fighting a smirk. “You are…”

What was he? Deluded? Fanciful? An exaggerated optimist?

“Yours,” John finished instead. He took Sherlock’s hand and pressed it to his chest, letting him feel the beating inside. “This heart is yours, Sherlock. Now and always. Wherever you may go, remember it.”

Sherlock pulled him in for a slow and lingering kiss, all the while thinking how it was the last one he would have until he returned to his John. As it ended Sherlock closed his eyes and rested their foreheads together, absorbing John’s presence and knowing nothing he might say could come close to adequate. He trusted John to feel it from him, feel how every part of Sherlock, worthy or not, belonged solely to him.

With a final silent nod of farewell, John let him go, and Sherlock left to fulfill his destiny.

 

* * *

 

The three months after Sherlock sailed off for the New World were the hardest of John’s life. He hurt, physically, in his chest, like his heart had been torn in two and now waited for its missing piece to return. To distract from Sherlock’s absence, John threw himself into his studies and filled his hours with extra shifts in the hospital. When his physician’s duties took him to other villages, he spent extra time examining the small cottages and considering which sort would be best for his and Sherlock’s needs. He mentally plotted out garden designs and apiary configurations and how best to quarantine the section for Sherlock’s experiments. Theirs would be a fine home, John thought, if only Sherlock were returned to build it with him.

Then one dark and rainy evening, the terrible news came.

John was taking his evening meal with the other apprentices when a messenger boy burst in, his riding leathers still dripping, to report that the blackened hull of Sherlock’s transport ship had washed up on the coast of Spain. Everyone on board had been found murdered or missing and presumed thrown overboard. Signs indicated the ship had been set upon by the Dread Pirate Redbeard, renowned across the Atlantic for never leaving survivors in his maritime conquests.

It was if all of the air escaped the room. The others turned to look at John, who sat frozen in his seat. It wasn’t possible. After all, Sherlock had promised he’d return. 

John departed the hospital within the hour as panicked denial raged through him. He traveled day and night to different villages, tracing the origin of the reports and demanding clarification of the news. Every source said precisely the same thing: no survivors, no survivors, no survivors.

Accepting the truth felt like a sword through John’s gut. Sherlock had died, alone at sea, by the hand of a merciless pirate lord. What’s more, John knew that it was his own fault. If he had put up more of a fight and convinced Sherlock that the money wasn’t important, if he’d not allowed himself to be seduced by the future and instead followed his instincts…

Returning to the hospital, John entered a deep depression. For days he sat alone in his room, lost in a haze of incomprehensible guilt and loss.

The worst part was that John could not bring himself to cry. Losing Sherlock was beyond tears, beyond screaming and thrashing and sobbing. It was as if warmth itself had escaped the world, leaving a void of emptiness inside him. This was what breaking felt like, John realized during the long sleepless nights. Breaking in places that could not be mended.

After two weeks of numbed hours and sporadic morsels of food, Master Stamford himself came to call upon John.

“We have need of you,” Stamford said through the door, soft and sad, for he was one of the few who had enjoyed Sherlock’s presence. “There’s been an outbreak of fever in a village downriver.”

“Fever?” John replied dazedly, not quite comprehending Stamford’s words.

“We require every available hand, John. Especially those like you who are used to working under crisis.”

John forced himself to stand for what felt like the first time in years. He stumbled to the door and cracked it open.

Stamford gasped when he saw the striking shift in John’s appearance wrought by the mourning. His face had gone hard and lean, his hair tinged with grey from the heartbreak, and any who looked upon him thereafter couldn’t help but notice the unshakable sadness deep in his eyes.

“Will you come?” Stamford asked as his shock finally fell away.

“If you have need of me, of course,” John said, standing straighter. “Of course I will come.”

The quiet, melancholic, handsome doctor would later attract attention from maidens and widows for leagues around. But, as John followed Master Stamford despite the gaping hole inside him, he knew that he would never love again. His heart had gone with Sherlock, and with Sherlock it had sunk into the cold empty depths of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art for the first chapter](http://antietamfalls.tumblr.com/post/89472542182/the-princess-bride-au-for-hedgehogandotter-art)


	2. Chapter 2

_Two years later_

 

John bolted upright with a start, shouting Sherlock’s name into the dark.

The sheets of his bed burned with damp heat. Heart thundering in his chest, John gasped for air and desperately felt his cheek for the lingering imprints of Sherlock’s last touch, but his fingers found no evidence of the dream. Sweat greased his palms and the night air cooled the nape of his neck. John caught his breath and glanced around the empty room as the residual horror gradually faded.

Although he’d been prone to nightmares after returning from war, reliving combat paled in comparison to watching Sherlock die every night in his dreams. John hadn’t actually seen it happen, of course he hadn’t, but that didn’t stop his imagination from speculating wildly. Sometimes John was there on the ship, close enough to lunge for the pistol aimed at Sherlock’s head, or to cut Sherlock’s noose as he was strung up, or to catch him as the Dread Pirate Redbeard pushed him helpless into the sea. No matter how hard John tried, Sherlock always met the same fate by Redbeard’s hand. The pirate loomed as a terrifying figure in John’s dreams, all matted auburn whiskers and shadowed hat and dark sweeping coat.

Waking from the nightmare heralded the beginning to John’s day. After seeing his love die once more (this time by a blade to the throat), there was no rest to be had, so John stretched and rubbed his pounding head and wished for the torturous dreams to leave him be.

Few others at Stamford’s hospital arose so early. John spent the dawn hours relieving the apprentices exhausted from a night spent attending to the ward, easing pains and redressing wounds and dispersing water. Losing himself in the needs of his patients soothed him, he’d found; it was one of the few activities that kept the inevitable black thoughts at bay.

As the sun crested the horizon, John paused to massage the ache in his leg. He figured he must have unknowingly injured it during the war, the pain having entered an odd extended dormancy and only recently reemerged to hinder him. Stamford told him a cane might be in order. John might have been inclined to agree if the patient weren't himself.

Wiggins, one of the apprentices, approached John as he stood. “Doctor Watson, there’s a woman come for help,” said the young man. “She's waiting in the yard."

John grimaced as he shifted weight back onto his bad leg. “Show me to her."

Outside, the hospital’s hired hands were just getting their morning start, hitching horses and sharpening tools for the day’s labors. John suppressed the hobble in his step as he followed Wiggins, nodding soberly whenever a worker greeted him. The urge to glance out toward the western field struck him, as it always did, but John refused to let himself look. Sherlock’s old hovel belonged to someone else now.

A peasant woman, her clothes dusty from travel, waited at the edge of the yard beside a rickety horse-drawn cart. She looked extraordinarily worried, but it was not until John got closer that he saw the reason. In the back of the cart on a bed of straw lay a little girl, peaky and pale.

“My husband says it’s only the flu,” the woman said when John introduced himself. She wrung her hands anxiously. “He didn’t want me to bring her but I know it’s not the flu. I just know it. Please, doctor.”

“Symptoms?” John asked as he motioned for Wiggins to unlatch the cart rail.

“She’s got a fever and can't stand the smell of food," said the mother."Most days she just cries and cries.”

The little girl, no older than four, whined and sniffled as Wiggins sat her upright for John to examine. She certainly looked miserable and feverish.

“Let’s see what this is all about, shall we?” John said. He felt her forehead and checked her eyes and ears, tested her pulse and listened to her breathing. As the mother had said, everything seemed to indicate a case of the flu, but something about it still niggled John.

He glanced at the apprentice beside him. “Have you got a tongue depressor on you?”

“Here,” Wiggins said, drawing one from an inside pocket and handing it to John.

John gently tugged at the child’s chin. “Open your mouth, that’s a good girl."

Her little mouth parted and he pressed down her tongue with the flat of the wood so he could peer inside. Small reddish spots glistened on her soft palate and the inside of her cheeks. A wave of alarm hit him as he recognized the signs.

"We need to bring her inside immediately," John ordered, stiffly pulling back. “Wiggins, take her at once and quarantine a room. Keep her away from the other patients. And summon the master. I must speak with him at once.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” asked the frantic mother.

John frowned grimly. “Smallpox.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Smallpox_?” sputtered Stamford when John came to tell him. Settled behind his desk and still in his sleepwear, the man appeared positively thunderstruck. “Smallpox! Heavens, is she the first?”

John folded his arms behind his back and nodded where he stood. “The first we’ve heard of.”

“And it’s definitely smallpox?”

“Two other physicians confirmed it."

Stamford shook his head in disbelief. “Countless more are undoubtedly suffering the early stages of infection. It’s going to spread, John. Before long the hospital will be overrun, and with a one-third mortality rate we’ll have bodies piled higher than the doorframes.”

“Then we’ve got to do something,” John insisted.

“I’ve seen dozens of outbreaks of pox and plague in my time. There is nothing we can do but prepare," Stamford said somberly. He leaned forward for his pen and ink set, bringing them close and setting them beside the stack of fresh parchment lying on his desktop. "We must stock supplies and spread the word. The ill must be avoided at all costs to prevent its spread. If we’re lucky, we might contain it to the surrounding villages.”

John pursed his lips as Stamford began scratching out a letter with his steel-tipped pen. "Avoiding the ill," he said, disapproval heavy in his voice.

Stamford glanced up as he continued writing. “As regrettable as it sounds, yes. This will be a trying time for all of us, John. Some doctors will refuse to treat the sick. Others will fall to the pox. We must press on as best we can.”

“Have you considered alternative options?" asked John. "Trying for a cure, or- or attempting-”

“There is no cure," Stamford interrupted pointedly. "There is prayer and there is luck, but there are no guarantees.”

“There might be," John said.

“What are you on about?”

The urge to pace prodded him and John took a few contemplative steps, the pain in his leg somewhat dulled as he focused on the problem at hand. “I spent a long time abroad," he said. "Fighting. You hear things. Half the stories are a load of rubbish, but others aren’t so unbelievable. I once met an elderly Turkish doctor. Out traveling to see the exotic parts of the world before his time came, he said. He told me how backward he found our medical treatments. Especially our fear of the pox. You see, the Turks have a method to make someone immune to catching it. He described it to me. Inoculation.”

Stamford appeared profoundly skeptical. “Inoculation?”

“The idea is to intentionally infect someone," John explained, stepping to the desk's edge. "They get sick for a little while, but then they recover and become immune to it. It doesn’t cure those already ill, but it will prevent the disease from spreading.”

“That’s completely counterintuitive,” Stamford argued. “How can infecting someone keep them healthy?"

John rubbed at his forehead in frustration. "I don't know. But it works, according to him."

Muttering away to himself, Stamford stared down at his partially-inked parchment before finally glancing back up. "Are you sure about this, John?"

He shrugged. “No.”

“Then how can we trust such a story?”

John leaned over the on desk, invading Stamford's space and rattling the ink pot. “We’ll have an outbreak on our hands if we do nothing,” he implored. “Hundreds may die. _Thousands_. Don’t we owe it to our patients to try?”

“We’re not experimenting on perfectly healthy villagers," Stamford said sternly. "It goes against every ethical code set down by God and man. Hippocrates himself would turn in his grave.”

That's what John had expected to hear. It was the same thing he would've said in Stamford's place. They needed someone else. Someone who hadn't a great deal to lose.

John straightened, a decisive calm coming over him. “I’ll do it."

Blinking in shock, Stamford stared at him. “What?”

“I’ll test it on myself.”

A long moment of silence passed between them. Stamford shook his head. “John, you could very well die,” he pleaded.  

John nodded once, curtly, and set his jaw. “Or I could live and prove inoculation works.”

"We'll need every physician we can get our hands on-"

Waving a hand to cut him off, John sighed. "We also need someone who hasn't got any loose ends weighing on their conscience. Name someone more fit to the task than me and I'll gladly step aside."

Stamford gazed at him searchingly, almost sadly, but eventually gave a grudging nod. “God be with you, John.”

 

* * *

 

Administering the vaccine was a simple matter; John chose a bifurcated needle for the job. A few sharp pokes with pox matter and it was done.

Word got around about what he'd done, of course, and for eight days the other doctors avoided John as if he were already contagious. New patients showing smallpox symptoms steadily arrived and filled the hospital. As Stamford had predicted, it wasn't long before their modest facilities were overwhelmed with the afflicted. The hospital grounds hosted makeshift wards, reminding John of the army field camps he’d seen in his time overseas. And like the army, every able-bodied person was conscripted into round-the-clock work caring for the sick.

Few of the doctors willingly set foot inside the rooms with the most contagious patients. John became a near-permanent fixture, spending more time in the ward than anyone else. Time became irrelevant with the constant cycle of giving orders to apprentices and clearing corpses and triaging patients. In all the chaos, John nearly forgot about his inoculation experiment, until the evening of the eighth day provided a rude reminder. The ward was unusually stifling, and as John instructed several apprentices on the proper way to burn bedding, the heat and close quarters got to him. One moment he was standing and the next he was slumped on the ground, sweating and dizzy, as the room spun about on its axis.

The apprentices backed away in alarm, but Wiggins came to feel his forehead. "You're burning up, doctor,” he said, offering a hand up. “The fever's got you."

Huffing a weak laugh, John took his hand and wobbled back to his feet. "Thank you, Wiggins, but I figured that one out on my own."

John returned to his room and crawled into bed. By evening his temperature was soaring, and by midnight the fever had him tight in its grip. He ached and moaned and suffered all alone, sweat stinging his eyes and soaking into the bedding. John became convinced he had taken a stupendously idiotic gamble and now lay in his deathbed.

He clung to the good memories made in that bed; Sherlock's warm skin and rumbling laughter, his piercing eyes set hungrily upon John, the comfort of him near and safe that John had so often taken for granted. At the worst of it, fever-crazed and delirious with longing, John sobbed into the night and begged Sherlock's forgiveness for failing him so entirely.

The fever raged for two days before breaking on its own. The pox blisters never developed, and by the afternoon of the fourth day John was well enough to rise and walk around. Stamford himself came to check John over but found no evidence of further infection.

A week later, as those exposed to the pox ward began falling sick and John remained healthy, another doctor volunteered to be inoculated. Before long the entire hospital had undergone the procedure and began administering it to uninfected villagers.

Word spread that a viable counter to the disease existed and soon droves of peasants flooded in to find the inoculation. The physicians at Stamford's hospital taught the procedure to other doctors, who in turn taught it to village healers, until, John heard, the practice had reached every corner of Florin.  

The outbreak was choked out of existence before it could spread beyond the surrounding villages. A total of thirty-two people died which, considering the alternative, John thought a reasonable outcome. Life at the hospital quieted and resumed its familiar rhythms, almost as if nothing had happened.

Little did John know, the vaccination wasn't the only thing that had spread throughout Florin.

 

* * *

 

It started with flowers and other small gifts. They’d be stacked outside the hospital most mornings, piled together to resemble a small shrine. John assumed they were left in thanks by those cared for at the hospital during the epidemic. It was not until a few days had passed that Wiggins pointed out they appeared specifically meant for John.

The gifts grew more extravagant, until one morning John found himself staring at a full team of oxen wandering around the yard. Then came the caged grey geese, the embroidered cloaks, the herd of Moroccan tree-climbing goats, the set of smithy tools, the twenty barrels of pine tar, the brand new falconry glove complete with accompanying goshawk, and one bewildered ostrich who took a special liking to Wiggins. It was all quite the mess and entirely uncalled for, and where John could he sent back or gave away the various extravagances. The only thing he kept, at Stamford’s insistence, was a carved cane inlaid with ivory.

The extent of John's fame eluded him until he ventured to the local villages. Everyone seemed to know who he was, whether they'd met him or not. Women wept for the spared lives of their children and men shook his hand with unnecessary vigor. Young women flocked behind him as he limped down the country roads, tittering amongst one another and smiling coyly whenever John glanced back. The widows and matrons were the worst, though; they showed no hesitation in shooting him suggestive looks and alluding to their interest in a "private" examination. John found it grating more than anything; he was a man who preferred his privacy, and the constant crowding and chattering and gift-giving from the thankful made outings almost unbearable.

Irritated as he was, John treated everyone he met rather abruptly, but no one seemed to care. He was a hero in the mind of the public and apparently nothing would sway their awe. John invented reasons to send others when a trip to a nearby village was in order, but somehow this only amplified his mystique and gave cause for an even grander uproar when he was forced to go out.

Stamford found it all immensely amusing and teased him relentlessly, but John nevertheless took to travelling with Stamford at all times because he was far more social and easily intercepted any obnoxious well-wishers. One afternoon they were strolling together back toward home, John limping along with his cane and Stamford lugging his physicians’ case. Two pretty farm maidens passed them on the road, side by side, their wide eyes locking onto John as they noticed him.

“Doctor Watson,” they murmured concurrently, bobbing their heads as matching blushes bloomed on their faces.

Stamford turned round to catch the view as they sauntered away. “I see the fishing is plentiful,” he said with a smirk.

“Is it?” John grumbled.

“Every woman from here to Florin Castle has got their eye on you,” Stamford needled. He glanced over at a strapping craftsman following just behind the women. As the man passed, he recognized John and let his eyes openly roam southward and back up. Stamford leaned closer to John and added, “Plenty of men, too.”

“Being ogled like a prized cut of mutton is not my idea of an advantageous situation,” John said tersely.

Incredulous, Stamford laughed. “They’re practically throwing themselves onto your doorstep.”

“Then I will kindly ask them to move because I have tasks to be getting on with.”

Stamford stopped and looked at him, growing solemn. “John, are you still… after all this time?”

“There is no _time_ ,” John bit out quietly, plodding past Stamford. “There is before and there is after, but the distance between them does not change. Not for me.”

How was it that Stamford didn’t know? John lived with it every day, every minute, but rarely talked about it. He supposed his silence on the topic of Sherlock must have given the false impression that moving on was a viable option.

“You love him still,” Stamford said, hesitancy in his tone confirming it.

John sighed and paused, stamping the tip of his cane into the dirt. He turned to look at Stamford. “I will love him until I die, and perhaps a little after.”

Stamford, blessedly, just nodded in understanding and let the subject pass.

The journey home wasn’t too much farther, but when they rounded the bend leading to the hospital John and Stamford stopped dead in their tracks. An enormous gilded carriage took up almost the entire road, complete with footmen and driver and four white horses in shiny golden harnesses.

“What in the bloody-?” Stamford said.

“That’s the royal seal,” John observed, pointing to the door of the carriage. They wandered past the behemoth in awe, drawing patronizing looks from the royal servants as if they might dirty the carriage simply by glancing at it.

Out in the yard, the entire staff of the hospital stood in a nervous bunch. Two elegantly dressed noblemen waited impatiently, muttering between themselves and ignoring the stares of the physicians and apprentices.

“Ah!” shouted one of the doctors when they spotted John and Stamford returning. “There he is now, your highness!”

The shorter of the two noblemen perked up. His clothes were noticeably grander than the other man’s and John was fairly sure he must be Prince Moriarty, the son of the king of Florin. The prince was a serpentine man, small and slight but with the dark, calculating eyes of a hawk. John hadn’t seen a reserve of intelligence like that since Sherlock.

Beside him was another nobleman, taller and blonder but bearing an air of general repose. He seemed unimpressed with everyone and everything, even his place at the Prince’s side. The most prominent feature about him was the bold slash of a scar over his right eye. Won in a swordfight of some kind, going by the ease with which he carried the sabre at his belt.

“Your highness!” Stamford babbled excitedly, dashing forth to greet the prince and bowing nearly to the point of prostration. “Welcome! And this must be Count Moran! What good fortune has brought a member of the royal family to my humble hospital?”

Entirely ignoring Stamford’s supplications, Prince Moriarty glanced inquiringly at John. “Is that him?” he asked his companion.

“Yes,” said Count Moran.

The prince eyed him critically. “You’re sure it’s the right doctor?”

“Yes,” confirmed the count.

“I’m standing right here,” John said, letting his long-simmering temper get the better of him, royalty or no. “I know how to speak properly and everything.”

A rather unsettling smile formed on the prince’s face. Prince Moriarty stared at him a bit longer, seemingly adjusting his perceptions of John. “You’re Doctor John Watson, whom I’ve heard so much about? The one who prevented the plague of smallpox?”

“That’s him,” interrupted Stamford. “Pride of our hospital, he is.”

John shot him a glare and gripped harder onto the handle of his cane, but Moriarty was circling closer.

“Tell me, doctor, are you wed?” asked the prince.

“No,” said John.

“Widowed?”

“No.”

“Primary caretaker for a relative or relative’s offspring?”

John blinked. “I haven’t- I haven’t got any relatives.”

“And this,” Prince Moriarty said, gesturing toward John’s cane. “This isn’t terminal?”

“Old war wound,” John told him.

Prince Moriarty practically bounced on his heels as he looked to Count Moran. “Oh, Seb,” he said. “He’s perfect, don’t you think?”

The count nodded. “Indubitably.”

“Sorry, perfect for what?” John said, glancing between them.

The prince took him by the arm. “My dear, you are a hero, and a hero cannot stay tucked away in a pathetic backwater hospital,” he said. “We are hiring you on at the castle to share your gifts with all the people of the land. You will be named Chief Physician of Florin.”

Now, John did not particularly like the cold way the prince was smiling, nor the alarmingly intense glare coming from the count. It seemed they were looking at him the way a lion might look at a mouse: passably interesting for the moment, but unquestionably edible once he stopped providing amusement.

“Chief Physician?” John asked cautiously.

“Doctor to the royal court and an adviser on all matters of public health,” the prince elaborated.

John considered the offer for a moment, but only that. The royal court, with all its frivolities and frills, was decidedly unappealing. “I’m sorry you traveled so far to find me, your highness, but I’m not interested in-”

Moriarty laughed aloud, cutting him off. “My dear, you are under the impression that you have a choice in the matter. The law grants me the power to call upon any Florinese to serve the king. You’re coming with me, whether you like it or not, to act as Chief Physician for my father the King of Florin.”

John took a moment to process the prince's words. He glanced to Stamford, who nodded eagerly, and back to the prince. Clearly, he didn't understand the folly of what he was asking. “With respect, your highness, my heart would never truly be in it," John said. "I do not work out of love for a king, or a country, or even for mankind. I work because I must.”

“And why must you work?” asked Count Moran.

John flexed his fingers around the cane handle. “Because if I don’t, the consequences are… destructive.”

The count looked at the prince. “What a delightful tease.”

“You must pardon my dear count, doctor," Prince Moriarty said. "He has an uncommon fascination with experimentation and the macabre. And it is not your heart I am asking for, but simply your hands.”

John sighed and bowed his head. “Then I am at the service of the king.”

The prince clapped his hands together. “Most splendid! We leave at once. Seb, pay the master.”

The count flung a heavy coin purse at wide-eyed Master Stamford, who caught it with a generous clinking of metal. “Surely that will cover his remaining debts,” Prince Moriarty called. “If there’s extra, use it to… I don’t know, what do the peasants buy, Seb?”

The count shrugged. “Cabbage?”

“How dull. Yes, buy as much cabbage as you desire." Prince Moriarty waved absently as he started off toward the carriage. "Doctor Watson, come.”

 

* * *

 

It baffled John, but the people of Florin loved him.

A crowd numbering in the thousands gathered for the official announcement of his appointment as Chief Physician. The square below Florin Castle, already decked out in fabulous decorations for the country's impending five hundredth anniversary celebrations, brimmed with commoners. High up above, John felt immensely out of place as he hesitantly waved from the balcony's edge, surrounded as he was by nobles of every breed. The elderly king, rheumatic and wheezing, stood nearby looking confused as to all the pomp and circumstance; Prince Moriarty and his constant companion Count Moran, whispering as always; and the prince's cousin, Princess Mary, who John had discovered a common fixture in the palace. Mary smiled at John much the way the village women had done, and much to the same effect.

When Prince Moriarty finally introduced him, the fervent cheers that erupted from the crowd might have led one to believe John made a regular habit of resurrecting the dead or walking on water. He wanted to shout back down to them that he had only done his job, had only done what needed doing, and perhaps if they knew the entire tale they would not think him such a bloody paragon. A part of him, and a sizable one at that, had not wanted the inoculation to work. The siren's pull of that sweet eternal rest was one of several shameful secrets his adoring public would never know.

John's education in courtly life commenced. Despite holding a prestigious profession, John was quickly told that his uncouth country ways were not fit for polite society. Tutors drilled him in etiquette and protocol and which fork to use when, how to address nobility and read heraldry and bow properly. The royal clothiers provided him with an expensive new wardrobe with glittering brooches and baubles to indicate his rank. The servants bowed to him and lesser nobles deferred to him at Prince Moriarty's behest.

Life at Florin Castle should have been easier, and in many ways it was, but for the most part John felt supremely useless. He saw patients now and then (usually the noble kind, presenting with faint coughs or slight fevers and convinced they were on the brink of death) and advised the king when asked of it (although in the king's wizened state, it mostly involved nodding along as the he muttered unintelligibly about things that may or may not have been related to the conversation at hand).

John sometimes reflected on how much Sherlock would have despised everything about the castle and John's new life. John wondered if he, too, didn't think it despicable, but the empty ache left by Sherlock's passing had neither lessened nor grown with his change of environments. Without Sherlock, his indifference came to define him.

It was perhaps in part because of this indifference that John did not see what was so obviously to come. There were whisperings about him, he knew, usually in conjunction with the princess, but it did not affect him until one day when Prince Moriarty and Count Moran (always together, those two) found him packing up his bag after seeing to a lord who had sprained his finger while playing squash (this was long after the invention of tennis but only just after squash, and far before badminton).

"Ah, Doctor Watson! How opportune to find you here," Prince Moriarty announced upon spotting him. "I was just regaling the count about my dearest cousin Mary. Darling girl, and so very headstrong. Runs in the family, they say, but I haven't a clue what they're talking about." He smirked at Count Moran.

John eyed them uneasily, not quite sure what they were getting at. "As you say, your highness," he said.

"It seems she's rather taken with you," Prince Moriarty continued, clasping his hands behind his back and raising a thin dark eyebrow. "Entirely taken, truth be told."

Impassive, John busied himself with clasping shut his bag. "Oh?"

A creeping smile lit the prince's face. "Yes. In fact, this very afternoon she happened to ask after you, and when I told her you were unwed, it seems she got an idea in that funny head of hers. Wouldn’t you know it, the willful girl went straight to her uncle the king to request your hand in marriage.”

John stared at the two of them. "Marriage? To me?"

“He dotes on her, you know," reflected Prince Moriarty. "Couldn't possibly say no to the dear. I think it’s a brilliant idea, don't you? Couldn’t have come up with a more perfect scenario myself.”

John had looked into royal law since coming to the castle. As the prince told him on the first day they met, it empowered members of the royal family to call upon any Florinese to serve at the discretion of the king. What hadn't been mentioned was that it also included matters of matrimony. It was rare for a prince or princess to choose a commoner, but under the right circumstances exceptions had been made.

Moriarty had, by now, noticed John's expansive silence. He cocked his head, cobra-like. “Don’t you find my cousin attractive, Doctor Watson?” he said, dangerously soft.

“She’s an intelligent and beautiful woman,” John hedged, because that was perfectly true. “I like her just fine.”

“But you object to marrying her.”

It was not that he objected, precisely. It was just that he'd never imagined a scenario involving marriage in his future. He certainly never intended to ask anyone, and it wasn't as if the average woman went around propositioning marriage. If that were the norm, he'd probably have drowned in proposals long ago. Thinking about the princess filled him with the same sort of blankness that came with every other daily thought. So John shrugged, because he honestly felt nothing toward any of it.

“It’s said you have other preferences,” Count Moran cut in. “Male preferences. Is that the problem?”

John blinked in surprise. His history wasn't exactly common knowledge. "No – I – it depends," he stammered. “I like women well enough. The princess is not unattractive.”

“Then what is it?” Prince Moriarty prodded.

He sighed, and it felt like cracking open an old wound. “I’m compelled to remind you of the circumstances of my hiring," John said stiffly. "I told you from the start my heart is not in play. You said my hands were all that you required.”

The prince actually _laughed_. “Is that what this is about?" Prince Moriarty gaped. " _Sentimentality_? It’s all very adorable, doctor, but to speak plainly, it does not matter. My cousin wants you, and so she will have you. Unless you intend to subvert your king's wishes?”

John thought hard about his answer. One could not betray a dead man, but finding love was out of the question. His heart had hardened to form a permanent, protective cocoon around his precious memories of Sherlock. But Sherlock would not have wanted him to be alone, and Mary was an inoffensive presence who might be made happier by John’s.

“As long as she understands,” John assented at last. “As long as she’s not expecting more than I can give.”

Moriarty clapped his hands together in serpentine delight. "My cousin will be overjoyed! We'll arrange an announcement at once, shall we?”

And just like that, John was again standing on the balcony overlooking the palace square, where the citizens had amassed to hear the betrothal declared. Mary stood by his side, pandering to the crowd and grinning like the cat that got the cream. She had dismissed the warnings about his capabilities outright, even after he reiterated his seriousness. John hoped she hadn’t made a decision she would regret in the end. He was not good company, not even for himself, and it was difficult to imagine a woman wanting to be shackled to that sort of mess for the rest of her life.

As they returned inside the castle, Mary stopped him. John had complimented her earlier on how beautiful she looked, done up in well-cut gown with rubies dripping from her throat and ears and dotted in her golden hair. "I have a gift for you," she said to John, signaling for a servant to bring forward a small gold-leafed box.

John lifted the lid. Inside on a velvet pillow laid a silver coronet set with dark sapphires. Mary smiled broadly and pulled it out, making to place it on his head.  

"No," John said, stepping back and raising a hand to stop her. "I couldn't."

“You are a prince of Florin,” Mary insisted. "It's only fitting."

 “I’m not a prince until-”

“A formality, nothing more," she interjected stubbornly. "In the hearts and minds of the Florinese, you are already a prince. Did you not hear them out there?”

It was all getting to be too much. John shook his head, at an utter loss to understand how this had become his life. He dropped his hand. "I never asked for this," he sighed. "Any of it."

Mary stepped closer and took his hand, squeezing it. "Our people clamor for you, John. You bring them hope, and they love you for it. Is accepting your place so very much to ask?"

John watched her a moment longer before finally bowing his head in acquiescence. Thoroughly pleased, Mary placed the coronet on his head, centering the largest gemstone right above his brow. It felt weightier than it should, as if draping him in a heaviness of spirit capable of sinking him to the bottom of the sea. What he wouldn't give to go there and rest beside his lost love, down where he belonged.

Mary's slim hand was at his cheek. "Such sadness in those eyes," she murmured, lifting his chin to meet her gaze. "Always so sad. Won't you tell me who it was?"

He wondered for a moment if she could see within him the shadow of a tall, gangly man with a wild halo of curls and silvery eyes that teemed with intoxicating energy, the thrill of life and adventure and passion and everything else that had gone from John.

A tight smile strained the corners of his mouth. "Someone who isn't coming back."

It was as close as he’d ever come to divulging his past to her. Something possessive flickered through Mary’s expression, so quick that John barely caught it.

"I can make you happy, John," she said after a time, sounding thoroughly certain. "If you let me."

He didn't have the heart to tell her otherwise. "I believe we're expected in the reception hall," John said instead, holding out an arm to escort her. "Shall we?"

Mary pursed her lips and nodded, her conviction dampened but unyielding, and took his elbow.

 

* * *

 

Mary's insistence on John's princely rank swiftly gained traction despite the small fact that they were not yet wed. A chorus of 'your highness' now went up alongside the bowing and scraping whenever John entered a room, and Prince Moriarty gifted him with a fine selection of crowns and circlets in varying levels of ostentatious.

John was miserable, frankly, and grew even more so when reminded of his upcoming nuptials to the princess. It was not that he disliked Mary in any particular way. She was clever and pretty and more than accommodating in the face of his brooding (which tended toward near constancy, these days), but the truth was that she wasn’t Sherlock, could never be anything close to Sherlock, and therefore the best she could hope to be was ‘tolerable’. Comparisons to a dead man were unfair, John allowed, but his heart had spoken and that was that.

Performing rounds in the countryside provided the only respite from the darkness of his moods. He missed working with the poorer folk of Stamford’s hospital, of treating true ailments that if left to themselves would render a farmer incapable of work and cause his family to starve. So, as often as the weather allowed, John packed his physician’s bag and set off on horseback to visit small villages and isolated cottages in search of people who truly needed his help.

Prince Moriarty learned about his ventures rather quickly and luckily condoned them. In fact, he provided several sets of riding gear befitting John’s station, as he put it, as an official envoy of the Crown and prince of Florin.

Late one afternoon, John was trotting his horse down a muddied path along the shores of Florin Channel. Villages were few and far between so far from Florin Castle and the roads were all but deserted, but John found a certain sense of tranquility among the lonely coastal pines and shore-birds wading in the tide waters. Far off across the Channel, the rugged crags of Guilder’s famous cliff-lined shores stood hazy and solemn.

Out here, John breathed free. Sometimes the solitude was enough to extract him from the cage of his own mind. John forgot his existence and Sherlock’s too. No pain, no loss. If only for a time.

The wind off the water whipped against his salmon-colored doublet (this was shortly after salmon, but only just, and although John had not personally seen one he had the color on good authority), matched with a gilded belt and dark riding trousers. Sturdy boots finished the ensemble, the leather matched to his saddlebags.

Down the worn road, a young woman suddenly appeared in the distance. She waved her arms and called out faintly, but it was not until John spurred his horse to a canter and drew nearer that he recognized it as a call for help rather than a greeting.

“It’s my uncle!” she shouted between her cupped hands. “Please, we need help!”

John reined his horse to a halt ten feet from her. She wore trousers like a man, well-fitted and obviously made to her measurements, along with a trim tunic under a long-sleeved coat. She was pretty in an innocent sort of way, like a farmer’s daughter, with large amber eyes and long brown hair plaited past her shoulders. Worry lined her face.

“What’s the matter?” John asked.

“My uncle was injured,” she said, anxiously gripping her coat sleeves. “He’s just over there by the shore. Please, sir, can you send for a doctor? We haven’t a horse.”

“There’s no need to send for a doctor, madam.” John swung a leg off his saddle and hopped down to unlatch his bag and cane. “I am one myself.”

“Oh, thank heaven!” she gasped. “Please, he’s this way.”

The young woman seemed oddly nervous as she led John down a winding path to the shoreline, where a small dock stood moored with an even smaller boat. Two men loitered there, both grey of hair, although one looked considerably older. The older man sat with his back to a tree trunk and clutched at his ankle as if in immense pain. The younger man waited concernedly by his side.

“Molly!” he called, his noticeable accent identifying him as French. He shot John a look of suspicion as he came to meet the young woman. “Who is this? You were to find a doctor!”

“Today’s our lucky day,” Molly replied, tugging at her plait. “I found one just up on the road!”

“John Watson,” John said, cautiously offering his hand. The Frenchman shook it, but mistrust lingered in his dark eyes. He wore a brown leather tunic and matching trousers. It was the sort of light armor someone might wear for sparring practice, which John supposed was a reasonable assumption because a slim, intricately-detailed silver fencing sword gleamed expensively at his hip. The presence of the weapon struck John as extraordinarily strange. He’d only seen noblemen wearing such finery at court, not out in the grimy countryside where it might get tarnished.

“John Watson?” called the man by the tree. “Lestrade, did I hear him say John Watson?”

John forcefully dismissed his misgivings as he set eyes on his patient. “That’s right,” he said, hobbling over to the ailing man.

“John Watson the famous physician? The prince of Florin?” the old man asked, looking up at him with awe. His clothes were dark and subtly embroidered in a long-gone style; they had been expensive, once. His skin and jowls sagged a bit with age, his teeth misaligned. “By the king’s own providence! Jefferson Hope at your service, your highness.”

“I’m not a prince,” John groused in reply. He set his cane against the tree and knelt. “I’m just a doctor. Now what’s the trouble, Mr. Hope?”

“Oh, we arrived this morning and set to lashing up the boat over there,” Hope explained. John began gently pressing on the bones and tendons in his ankle. Hope winced. “Tripped on a loose board and twisted the bloody thing.”

“We’re trying to reach Florin Castle,” Molly said from behind him. “You see, we’re performers and we’ve come for the anniversary celebrations.”

“Florin Castle?” John said, glancing up. “Florin Castle is half a day away by horse. You’ll not make it there before dark, especially with your uncle injured, and I’m afraid there isn’t a village for miles.”

Hope’s face abruptly dropped all signs of pain and shifted into deadly, calculated focus. “Then no one will hear you scream,” he leered.

Before John could react, someone grabbed him from behind (the Frenchman, by the size and strength) and a thick damp cloth was clamped over his nose and mouth. It reeked of ether and John fought against the arm-lock, managing to get his feet under him and thrust back against his attacker. Molly shrieked and Lestrade grunted in his ear as they toppled to the ground, rolling and wrestling in the soft soil, but Lestrade held like a barnacle to a keel and kept the cloth in place.

The chemical took its effect, and John drowned in darkness.

 

* * *

 

The stone door of the secret passage grated in irritating fashion as it swung outward into the prince’s private study. Brushing cobwebs from his sleeves, Count Sebastian Moran stepped out through the cold ashes of the fireplace. The prince, darkly pensive, reclined in the chair behind his desk.

“Sundown,” Moran announced. “Doctor Watson has not returned from his ride.”

Prince Moriarty glanced out the window, where the warm tones of the dusky sky were steadily darkening. “You’re certain they intercepted him?”

Moran nodded. “Watson is a skilled rider and navigator. He would not get lost, and if he managed to escape he’d come here at once to raise the alarm.”

Steepling his fingers, the prince sunk lower in his seat. “I don’t know if I trust these assassins you hired. Squatters from the Thieves’ Forest, the lot of them.”

“Hope is not a squatter, my prince,” Moran replied. “He is a master criminal renowned for his intellect and guile.”

Prince Moriarty quirked an eyebrow and shot him a sidelong look. “I’d much rather you performed the deed yourself, Seb. But I suppose necessity dictates we distance ourselves from the act. How would it look if my own right hand became a suspect?”

Moran would have preferred to do it too, even if the Pit of Despair wasn’t secure enough to keep his involvement a secret. Such a pity, that. He suspected Watson, once broken, would make for a wonderful screamer.

“Do you think the plan will work?” Moran asked.

“Of course it will work, you half-wit,” the prince hissed with sudden vigor. “He’s a war hero. A beloved physician. A prince of Florin betrothed to my dearest cousin. Imagine the public outrage when we find his mutilated corpse on the Guilder frontier. The people of Florin will demand retribution the moment they hear of it.”

Moran stroked his chin slowly. “It’s almost too perfect.”

The prince kicked his feet up onto his desk. “The best-laid plans often appear effortless. The easiest part was cementing Mary’s interest in him, did you know? She thinks the marriage was her idea. The princess’s mourning will move the country to action quicker than any sordid tale.”

“When shall I mobilize the armada?”

“Dawn.”

Moran bowed deeply. “It shall be done.”

He turned and made to pull at the wall sconce that triggered the secret door in the fireplace, but before he could grab hold the prince shifted audibly. “Seb.”

“Yes, my prince?” Moran said, spinning.

Prince Moriarty had straightened in his seat. A dark and dangerous cast came over his face, cold as the ashes beneath Moran’s feet. “Guilder will be left a smoldering ruin before I’m through,” the prince said. “I will skewer their king and skin his children for my saddle. Can I trust in your allegiance?”

Moran bowed again. “To the very end.”

The prince sat back, pleased. “Good. Now, away with you,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “Tomorrow we hunt for our dearly departed Doctor Watson.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hover over links for translations!

Twilight had begun its slow creep across the Florinese countryside when the man in black made landfall.

The dimming rays of sunlight found the single-mast cutter, black of sail and light of keel, skipping across the channel waters and slipping into moor, silent as the oncoming night. 

Black salt-stained boots alighted on the dock, matched by a black silk shirt and sash. Gloves of fairest black lambskin lined their owner's hands, creased from long hours wielding the slender rapier on his hip. The metal flashed in the fading sunlight, dangerous as the eyes hooded beneath the black half-mask.

The man in black flitted like a shadow across the shoreline. Already, he was too late.

The overlapping horse tracks in the road weren’t suspicious in and of themselves, but the same could not be said for the snatch of saddle leather, branded with the mark of the royal tanner, left blatantly behind. Closer to the water, an ivory-inlaid cane lay abandoned in a patch of grass beside a gnarled oak tree. The most significant piece of evidence, however, was the imprint in the dirt.

The man in black crouched to examine it, his gloved fingers ghosting over the loose soil.

A scuffle had occurred between two male participants. The loser had been laid out for a period of time, unmoving as if asleep. By the length of the marks, he stood a good six inches shorter than the man in black and wore finely-stitched clothing. He had been dragged away toward the dock.

The architects of this crime, numbering three by the footprints, had gone to astonishing lengths to leave all the proper evidence behind. Even the most mentally deficient of investigators might piece together what had happened.

Rising in the moonlight, the man in black set his gaze on the open waters of Florin Channel. Someone had beaten him to abducting John Watson, Prince of Florin, and by their folly was going to pay.

 

* * *

 

The gentle creak and sway of a waterborne vessel lulled John back to consciousness. Cold salty air bit sharp at his nose and soft voices murmured in the distance, drowned out here and there by lapping water and the soft ripple of sailcloth. John gradually cracked open his eyes. A pitch-black nighttime sky unfurled above him, dotted with an endless field of stars.

“Crocodile,” said a man with a soft French accent.

“Elephant,” answered a woman.

The events on the shoreline swiftly returned to John's muddled brain. He was stowed face-up on the wooden planks of a boat deck with his hands bound at the wrist over his stomach. The voices belonged to Lestrade and Molly, and John subtly shifted his eyes to spy their dual forms lounging up by the helm. Neither one seemed to be the mastermind behind the operation. The vile Jefferson Hope must be somewhere nearby.

Had they kidnapped him for ransom? It wasn't an entirely abnormal predicament for the nobility, particularly those who wandered far from the safety of their castles. In hindsight, John supposed he should have exercised more caution on the road.

John furtively flexed his wrists and felt the knots of rope slide loosely over his skin. They’d made the poor decision to tie his hands in front, and his legs were not bound in any way. With the right timing, escape was all but guaranteed. John forced himself to stay perfectly still and wait as he listened to his captors' ongoing conversation.

“Er… tuna.”

“Aardvark.”

“Aardvark?” Lestrade scoffed. “What the bloody hell is an aardvark?”

“It’s sort of a pig-thing,” explained Molly. “With a long snout. It's got an enormous tongue for eating ants.”

“You’re making that up! You’re just making up animals now.”

“I am not! I’ve seen one in a menagerie.”

“ _Jésus-Christ_ ," Lestrade sighed. "Fine. What letter is it?”

“Aardvark ends with ‘K’.”

“Erm… kid.”

“Animals, Greg.”

“Kid like a baby goat.”

“You’re awful at this game. Deer.”

“At least I choose real animals. Whose idea was it to play, anyway? Rabbit.”

“Mine, because I win every time. Tarantula.”

“You only win because you cheat,” Lestrade said. There was a brief pause. “Here’s a good one. Armadillo.”

“I don’t cheat! You’re just a sore loser. Oryx.”

“Cheating! Right there! What the devil is an oryx?”

“It’s similar to an antelope.”

“What letter does it end in?”

“’X’.”

“ _[C’est des conneries]()_!” Lestrade exclaimed in outrage. “‘X’? Is there a xylophone bear or something?”

“Shut it, you two!” Jefferson Hope suddenly shouted from what sounded like the opposite end of the vessel. “I’ve warned you before. No animals!”

There was a small stretch of silence from his underlings. Then, faint but distinct: “Extra-small horse,” Lestrade whispered.

Molly snorted a sharp, uncontrollable laugh, and the noise summoned a heavy series of footsteps toward them. John glimpsed Hope's white hair as he passed in the moonlight.

"I am cursed with imbeciles," Hope lamented. "I told you to be quiet or– what is it now, Lestrade?"

“Ah," the Frenchman said. "Nothing, really. I was only thinking about what you said before.”

“Before? When?”

“When we captured the prince. You said, 'no one will hear you scream’. I think it is a bit clichéd, no?”

“I don't pay you to think!" Hope hissed. "Get this through your thick skull. Your mind is a finger-painting compared to my Sistine Chapel. A ramshackle shanty beside the splendor of my Hagia Sophia. The next time you're tempted to think, _don't_."

Lestrade shrugged. “I’m just saying. It’s not a good phrase.”

"Have you so quickly forgotten my generosity, Lestrade? I should send you back to that tavern in Calais where I found you! Drunk, dishonored, stripped of all rank, banished in shame from King Louis’ _mousquetaires du roi_ —“

“All right,” Lestrade grunted.

“And you,” Hope spat, rounding on Molly. “Never forget where I rescued _you_ from. Abandoned in Scotland, the mighty maiden brought low and publicly jeered wherever you tried to earn prize money in the ring—”

Molly’s face was bright red. She nodded silently, cowed by Hope’s abuse.

"Never forget! There's a dozen more where you witless cretins came from, so I suggest you avoid giving me yet another reason to fire you once our contract is completed."

"There's no need—" began Lestrade.

"Then don't push it," Hope cut him off, pointing a criticizing finger.

Molly suddenly put a hand on Lestrade's arm and looked apprehensively toward John. "Careful! I think the prince might be waking up."

"Quite to the contrary," Hope said casually. "He's been awake and listening to us for some time now. Haven't you, your highness?"

John opened his eyes in surprise and turned his head where he lay tied. Clearly, Hope's perceptive talents were on par with Sherlock’s. "How did you know?" he asked.

"Child’s play for a proper genius,” Hope mused. “Trying to get the jump on us, were you? I suggest you refrain from trying to outsmart me. It doesn't work, as many would attest. At least, they would if they were still alive to do so. Molly, be a dear and help our guest up. Lestrade, our heading has drifted two degrees off course."

Molly approached and pulled him into a sitting position against the ship's rail with unexpected strength.  John hadn’t quite found his sea legs amidst the sway of the deck, but the higher perch allowed him to take in the moonlit waters all around the ship. By the size of the waves, they were still travelling through Florin Channel and had not reached the open sea.

Up at the helm, Lestrade was watching the dark stretch of water in their wake. “Are you certain it’s only us?” he called.

“Unquestionably," said Hope, settling into a confident lounge against the main mast. "This is the fastest ship in Florin. And besides, there’s no one clever enough to follow us through—”

Far off the stern, immense black sails billowed in the moonlight. Hope’s words died in his throat and he launched upright in alarm. Someone was definitely following them.

“What were you saying?” said Molly.

They all stared at the mysterious sails for a long moment before Hope could bring himself to provide an explanation. “It’s just a coincidence. A sailor out for a jaunt in snake-infested waters or… a fisherman...”

“At night?” asked Lestrade, raising an eyebrow. “The only people sailing the channel at night are criminals.”

“We’re sailing it,” Molly pointed out.

“And we’re criminals, aren’t we? There you have it.”

Hope turned to study John suspiciously. “You don’t have any friends tracking us, do you?”

John glared at him. “I haven’t got any friends.”

“Moriarty?” Hope proposed.

Molly tutted. “Moriarty’s sails bear the royal seal.”

“Whoever it is, he’s after the prince,” guessed Lestrade, eyeing the distant ship as it crested through the choppy waters. “That’s what I’d be after. For ransom.”

Hope shook his head. "It’s impossible that he could know who's on board. There hasn't been time—"

Seizing his chance while they were all distracted, John suddenly leapt to his feet and shoved Molly over the railing. She landed in the cold water with a surprised shriek and an enormous splash and John rounded, poised to take on whoever came at him next, but Lestrade rushed past him to the rail of the boat.

“Molly! Molly, oh, _mon Dieu_!” He looked at John with terror in his eyes. “She can’t swim! She’ll drown!”

That was the entire point of throwing her overboard, John thought, but Lestrade made no move to retaliate as Molly flailed in the water. John blinked at the Frenchman in profound confusion. What sort of criminals were these people?

“Damn it, Lestrade, contain him!” Hope shouted in annoyance, safely keeping his distance from John.

“What about Molly?” Lestrade wailed. “The snakes!”

"Then go get her!"

“I can’t swim either!”

“Oh, sod it,” John sighed, and he leapt into the drink.

Freezing midnight water hit every inch of his body. John’s muscles seized from the shock and he fought for control of his limbs. His wrists were still tied, but he managed an awkward stroking motion and began kicking toward Molly's thrashing figure.

As soon as John got within arm's reach of her, Molly gurgled a shout and made a desperate grab for his shoulders. Their combined weight briefly submerged them both beneath the open waves before bobbing to the surface, coughing and sputtering, and John was forced to push Molly away to spread their weight and keep from going under again. "Hold on and kick," John said through chattering teeth, meeting Molly's fearful eyes. She nodded, although it might have been a shiver, and John began pulling her along as he stroked back toward the boat. 

She got the hang of it relatively quickly, straining to prop her head out of the water and splashing unevenly with her feet, but as they neared the boat a rattling hiss echoed over the waves. Lestrade was shouting inaudibly from the railing and Molly's limbs went frantic, pitching them to one side. John turned his head, briny seawater flooding his nose and mouth, to see the sinuous shape of one of Florin Channel's venomous water-snakes gliding swiftly toward them.

John had only ever seen them from dry land. The juveniles congregated along the shallow pools of the shore and caught toads and birds for food. This one, a mature adult of at least ten feet, seemed to have bigger prey in mind. It let out another monstrous hiss as its jaws distended, revealing twin fangs, and a surge of fear shot up John’s spine. Molly clung to his shoulders again and he struggled to stay above water with his eyes on the beast, his bound hands all but useless for self-defense.

The serpent lunged for them like a spring-loaded toy, but just as John braced himself for an ignominious death from attempted rescue of the person he’d tried to murder, Molly slammed down one fist, perfectly timed, to strike the creature directly on its skull. The water-snake thrashed and disappeared beneath the water with an erratic flick of its tail, injured or at least deterred, and John needed no encouragement to resume his swim toward the boat.

Lestrade had strung a mooring line down into the dark water. John ensured Molly got a good grip on the rope, but as he was about to push off and try his luck swimming for the shoreline, strong hands suddenly grabbed hold of his doublet and thrust him from the water. John went sailing and landed with a thud back inside the boat, utterly stunned.

It wasn't until Molly climbed onboard and shot him a satisfied grin that John realized it was _her_ who had tossed him like a rag doll. “My God, you’re strong,” John wheezed.

"It's not my fault," Molly said. She was breathless and dripping wet, but still managed the exasperated tone of someone routinely forced to defend their own existence. "I was born that way. And besides, I think you deserved that.”

“I just saved you!” John said, coughing up the leftover seawater from his lungs.

She leaned down to look at him, her plait sagging over one shoulder. “The next time you try to drown me, I’ll let the snake have you."

"No more surprises. Tie him properly this time," Hope ordered as Lestrade started collecting up a coil of rope. He glanced at John, menacing. "Best behavior, your highness, or I may be forced to permanently silence you for your trouble."

 

* * *

 

As dawn broke over the channel, John sat soaked and shivering with his arms wrenched behind his back and lashed securely to the railing. Lestrade had found a blanket for Molly, who wore it around her shoulders and appeared only slightly less miserable than John. They seemed to be headed toward a greyish wedge of Guilderian coastline in the distance, although the haze crowding the horizon made it difficult to be sure.

The black ship in the distance had not diverted course despite Hope's insistence upon its helmsman's impossible knowledge, and in the growing morning light John swore it was getting closer. He held out feeble hope that it carried Florinese soldiers sent by Prince Moriarty, but he'd never seen such a small, sleek ship put to use by the royal armada. His three kidnappers nervously watched their pursuer and John focused on plotting ways to use the distraction to his advantage yet again.

John had expected to be taken to a stronghold where he would be properly imprisoned for the duration of the ransom, but as the sheer rocky cliff face loomed high above their tiny vessel, John's plans fell to pieces.

“The Cliffs of Insanity!” Hope announced with relish. "Let's see if our friend wants a crack at that, shall we?"

The boat shuddered as Lestrade guided it to ground on a stub of silty land. Most of the tiny landmass was taken up by a thickly woven basket, broad enough to comfortably hold a person, fettered up with ropes and pulleys. John squinted at two heavy ropes that extended up the cliff face and vanished into the rays of the sun. The cliff itself had to reach over a thousand feet. Surely the ropes didn't go all the way to the top?

By Hope’s command, Lestrade loosed John from the rail with a flick of his sword tip. Molly dragged him down the gangplank, but it was not until she made toward the basket that John realized she intended to put him inside it. 

“Oh, you can’t be serious!” There was no way he was going up in _that_ thing. John planted his feet in the ground, resisting the tug of her ridiculously strong arms.

“It’s perfectly safe!” Molly chided. “Are you afraid of heights?”

John tried to twist out of her grip. “I’m not big on the idea of plummeting to my death, no.”

“Here,” Lestrade said, tossing Molly a square of cloth.

She folded it into a blindfold and tied it around John’s eyes as he struggled. Once it was in place he craned his head around, sightless, and scowled. “Is this supposed to make me feel better about the situation? Because it’s not. It’s definitely not.”

Molly smacked him on the head. At least, he thought it was Molly. “Shush, now, or we’ll add a gag,” she warned.  

“Hurry up!” shouted Hope. “He’s almost upon us!”

There wasn’t much John could do to stop Molly from placing him in the basket. The heavy weave shuddered with the sounds of clinking pulleys and creaking wicker as his captors fitted themselves in alongside him in the cramped space.

“Ready?” Molly asked.

“Go,” Hope replied. "It'll take him hours to find a port."

Molly grunted aloud and the basket shifted awkwardly, jolting upward inch by inch until John felt the distinct swaying sensation of hanging in mid-air. He braced against the side of the basket as best he could, his stomach doing somersaults.

Molly winched the ropes for what felt like hours. Wind buffeted the basket as their altitude climbed, swinging them at what had to be dizzying heights, but Molly's pace neither broke nor slowed. She was an absolute machine, lifting three grown men as well as herself long past the point when John's own arms would give out.

She only paused for a moment when the lines gave a sudden jerk. "What was that?"

“He’s on the rope!" Lestrade called. "I can see him! A man all in black!”

"That's impossible! No one but Molly can climb such heights unaided," Hope said, but a note of fear had entered his voice. “Faster, my dear!”

The basket lurched into motion as Molly resumed working the ropes. “I’m— _hrgh_ – going as fast as I– _hrgh_ – can!”

“’The strongest woman alive’, that’s what they called you," Hope sneered. "Perhaps I was mistaken in rescuing you from that dreadful place.”

"No!" Molly grunted.

"Clearly I was, if any old cad can do what you do. Why should I keep you around at all?"

The pace of Molly's ascent jumped to double-time.

"There's a good girl," Hope said. His slithery tone made John want to tip him right out the basket.

Molly was struggling for breath by the time the basket finally came to a halt. The basket creaked as the people around John climbed out, and he tried not to think about the stretch of empty air between him and the shallow stony reaches far below. Rough hands dragged him from the basket and onto the grit of sandy soil.

“Cut it!” Hope ordered, and there came a sudden _snap_ of whipcord rope and the scrape of wicker on rock.

“Did he fall?” Lestrade asked.

Only silence answered him.

“Incredible,” Molly eventually breathed.

“He’s very strong and very brave,” Lestrade said. “I must grant him that.”

"Finish him, Lestrade," Hope said, his voice coming as a deadly whisper.

“Finish him?” Lestrade asked.

“If he doesn’t fall on his own, you will be here to ensure his demise,” Hope instructed. “Stab him, slice him, push him off the cliff. I don’t care. Do not think about joining us until he’s dead.”

“Push him off the cliff?" Lestrade said, horrified. "That’s not the way of an honorable combatant.”

“I don’t pay you for your honor, I pay you for your sword! So use it!”

“I will fight him only on fair ground.”

“Whatever, whatever! Just finish him!” Hope sighed. Someone grabbed John’s bound hands from behind and yanked him to his feet. “Come along, your highness. We’ve a schedule to keep.”

 

* * *

 

High on the cliff top, Lestrade practiced his parry and thrust among the dilapidated stonework of a long-destroyed watchtower. The loose sandy soil made for poor footing, and the crumbling stones among the scrub brush might send a man flying if he didn’t watch his step. Lestrade's expert eyes studied the terrain with care, but once he’d memorized its nuances and identified the treacherous spots, there wasn’t much else to do but wait.

Lestrade _hated_ waiting. 

Every now and then he approached the cliff’s edge to take stock of the man in black’s progress. Their pursuer had clung like a whelk to the sheer rock when the rope fell. Less than fifty feet from the summit, he continued his climb, fingers jammed into tiny crevices as he painstakingly tested each new foothold. Progress was negligible every time Lestrade checked, until eventually it looked as if his opponent had stopped ascending entirely.

“Sorry,” Lestrade called down to him. “I couldn’t help but notice. Are you stuck?”

The man in black squinted up at him, the tail ends of his mask fluttering in the wind.

“If you are,” Lestrade continued, “might I aid you in some way?”

“Aid me?” the man called distrustfully.

“It’s just that it’s very dull up here, you see, and I am ready to dispatch you.”

A smirk of amusement crossed the exposed portion of the man in black’s face. “You’re kidding.”

Lestrade patted the gleaming hilt belted to his side. “I have a sword. You have a sword. I was hoping for a duel, but perhaps a spar or a tiff might suit you.”

“A man with any intelligence would wait until I’d exhausted myself and let me fall to my death,” the man in black reasoned.

“Ah! How fortunate,” Lestrade replied, going to one knee. “I am told I am not an intelligent man.”

The man in black appeared to roll his eyes. “Obviously.”

“There is rope up here. You’ll allow me to help?"

His opponent frowned. “Considering our circumstances, I don’t see how I can trust your intentions.”

“Perhaps if I swore an oath?”

“The one constant of the universe is that people lie. How are you any different?”

Lestrade placed a hand over his heart. “I swear on the grave of King Louis-“

“No good,” the man in black interrupted. “I’m not fond of the French.”

There was only one vow more solemn than that to his liege. Lestrade’s hand rose in a formal salute. “I swear by the departed souls of my comrades in arms, _[qu'ils reposent en paix](),_ that you will reach the top unharmed.” 

The man in black watched him for a moment before stiffly nodding his consent. 

In less than five minutes’ time, Lestrade was pulling up the last frayed strands of rope with the man in black in tow. He was winded from his efforts, and once he got his feet under him he immediately reached for his sword. 

“In time,” Lestrade said, raising a hand. “Catch your breath or it will be much too easy.” 

The man in black glanced at him suspiciously but nevertheless took the opportunity to rest on a nearby rock and busy himself with adjusting one boot. He was tall, but not overly so, and thin but unquestionably athletic. The wide sleeves of his black shirt hid his musculature, but by the way he conducted himself the blade at his side was certainly no showpiece. His mask covered much of his face.

Lestrade sat down beside him. “ _Pardonnez-moi_ , but do you happen to bear a large scar over your right eye?”

“No,” the man in black said, quite flatly.

“How can I be sure? You are wearing a mask.”

The man in black released his boot and looked up. “I suppose you’ll have to defeat me to find out. I must warn you that I am terribly motivated to win.”

“You’re after the prince?”

“Well, I haven’t come all this way for your scintillating conversation. Is that how you always start off? ‘By the way, before I kill you, have you got a gruesome scar?’”

Lestrade shrugged. “Most people don’t wear masks.”

“I’m not ‘most people’.” His eyes swept up and down Lestrade. “And neither are you. You’re a royal musketeer.”

The shock of the man in black’s observation took a good minute to wear off. Few people knew of Lestrade’s shameful past, and far fewer could read it in a glance. But he had been called out, and he could not bring further dishonor to his former order, so Lestrade stood with disciplined precision and performed a flourish with his sword, bowing deeply. “ _Sous-Lieutenant_ Grégoire Lestrade, at your service. How did you know?”

The man in black leaned forward and pointed. “Your sword. That’s no brigand’s blade. The craftsmanship is unparalleled and the hilt is signature work of the Parisian royal forge. And I have some small experience with recognizing a genuine military bearing. Tell me, how does a lawman end up a mercenary?”

“Ah,” Lestrade said, planting his swordpoint into the dirt. “A tale of great tragedy and injustice.”

"That's the only sort worth telling. Do share."

After all these years, the pain of the past had not lessened. Lestrade sighed, remembering. "As a youth, I dreamed of serving my king as a _mousquetaire_. Hard work and dedication earned me that right. I served with honor and good faith, never thinking of a life without the tabard."

The man in black had placed his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers. "Until something happened. What was it?"

“There were a number of disappearances. At first it was only among the peasants, but then the grand-nephew of a notable marquis was taken. The marquis had the ear of the king's favorites and they begged His Majesty for aid. The king ordered an investigation and I was tasked with discovering the truth of the matter, but I was soon troubled by much of what I heard: a foreigner, they said, with a heart of stone and eyes like death itself. Rumors spoke of strange experiments and monstrous torture. The trail led us straight to his doorstep. Such a fool, I was.”

"It was a farmhouse outside Coulommiers, and we thought it was abandoned. I brought my best swordsmen, just in case we met trouble, but all we found were a few scraps of clothing. As we looked around inside, the sound of muskets rang out and there was shouting from outside. I rushed to the window and saw that the five I had left as sentries were dead, shot down from a distance that seemed impossible. I ordered my men to get out at once, but that was when I smelled the smoke. Someone had set fire to the house to burn away the evidence of their misdeeds."

"The fire took what remained of my _mousquetaires._ I survived by the grace of God. A beam collapsed above me, shielding me from the flames, and I crawled blindly into the smoke. That was when I saw him. A man cloaked in night and hellfire, come to examine his work. With the strength left in me, I drew my sword and slashed at him. The tip struck his eye and he screamed. I thought I had put his eye out, but it was only a superficial wound. A vertical cut, like so.” Lestrade traced a finger from his right brow down to his cheek. “He escaped, but I had seen such injuries. A scar marks him for life. I am sure of it.”

“They blamed you,” guessed the man in black.

Lestrade nodded. “I was in command. I was the sole survivor. The evidence had turned to ash, and a price had to be paid for the lives lost that day.” He sighed miserably. “I do not forget their faces. Tobie, Pierre, Saloman… and the rest. I trained each of them myself and led them all to a cruel fate. It is right that I was cast out.”

“And you’ve sought vengeance upon the scarred man ever since,” the man in black filled in, a curious finger stroking his chin. "This doesn't answer the original question."

“What can I say? This was some ten years ago, and I have yet to find the villain who murdered my comrades. Jefferson Hope values my skill and the money is good. The revenge business is not as lucrative as one might wish.”

"You could have sold that," the man in black suggested, indicating the sword.

“I would sooner part with an arm or leg,” Lestrade said, turning the blade so it caught the morning sunlight. “They let me keep my sword as an act of charity. When I find the scarred man, I will pierce his heart with it.”

The man in black stood. “Well, if you're obliged to use it before then, I believe I’m ready. I don’t suppose I can persuade you to postpone this until a later time, when I am not in such a rush?”

Lestrade raised his sword and assumed a ready posture. “Sorry. It’s my job, you know.”

Shrugging, the man in black drew his own blade. “Worth a try.”

“What do you want with the prince?" Lestrade asked. "Do you intend to ransom him? Kill him?”

“So very curious, aren’t we? Your curiosity will be your undoing.”

Their blades met in a sharp kiss of steel, and the duel was begun. Lestrade opened with a series of aggressive strokes designed to keep his opponent off balance. Paired with the tricky terrain, the strategy forced most swordsmen to commit a fatal mistake in a matter of minutes, but the man in black smoothly deflected his advances with unharried grace.

“You’ve received significant training,” Lestrade noted.

“Oh, I just dabble, really,” the man in black replied. “It’s simple enough as exercises go. Don’t you think?”

Lestrade pressed his advance and they maneuvered through the uneven ruins. The man in black continued to parry and riposte without extraordinary effort, and Lestrade got the distinct impression that the other man was toying with him to work out his style and strategy. Every stroke seemed to be predicted with preternatural skill, as if the man in black could decipher what was to come by the tension in Lestrade’s muscles rather than the movement of his sword.

Beads of perspiration began to trickle down Lestrade's temple. It was a distraction he’d been trained to ignore, but truthfully it had been so long since he'd fought someone who could break him into a sweat that the sensation was overtly bothersome. Outlasting his opponent was out of the question; Lestrade had just watched the man climb a thousand foot cliff and strike up with his sword after the briefest of rests. He’d have to beat him on the grounds of technical skill.

Lestrade chuckled as the steel sang. The man in black frowned beneath his mask.

“Forgive me, but there is something you do not know,” Lestrade told him. “I’ve spent years training others. It is in my nature to give an opponent a chance, but I was chosen for this task because I bested the entire garrison in honorable combat.”

Lestrade switched to the fluid strokes that made best use of his natural agility, and the man in black was immediately put on the defensive. He let his body take over, instinctually choosing each move from decades’ worth of intensive training and muscle memory. 

There were some who had called Lestrade the best swordsman in France. He was not fond of such generalizations, but it was true that few of his opponents had lasted more than ten minutes of active combat. He’d taught many gifted fighters, but as the man in black held out and slowly regained some semblance of rhythm, Lestrade had to admit he was impressed. His opponent was adapting to his technique right there on the spot. He'd never worked with a student who learned with such speed.

Lestrade didn't let him take advantage of it. His blade became a flashing blur, feinting and disengaging faster than the human eye could see. The thoughtless state of battle-flow settled upon him, the sword an extension of his arm and reacting to every thought as if it were part of his own body. The man in black shuffled backward as he struggled to withstand the assault, edging closer and closer to the cliff's edge.

Inches from the colossal drop, the man in black scowled. He lunged out of desperation, trying to regain the field, but Lestrade easily riposted. The time for the killing blow was at hand; Lestrade swung out with great force, hoping to deliver a swift and respectful end to his opponent.

But the man in black managed to raise his weapon in self-defense. Theirs blades locked, the razor edge of Lestrade’s steel a mere finger's width from the man in black’s throat.

And then, trapped between a thousand feet of open air and the pressure of Lestrade's sword, the man in black _chuckled_.

Lestrade narrowed his eyes. "What are you laughing about?"

“There is something you don’t know, either," said the man in black, wobbling precariously. "You may have lost your honor, but I never had any to begin with."

The man in black shoved Lestrade backward in a sudden surge of strength. Lestrade staggered and the man in black’s free fist slammed directly into his face, not the least bit cushioned by the leather glove covering his knuckles.

The unexpected attack sent Lestrade’s sword skittering away across the sand as he toppled to his knees, warm blood flowing from his nostrils and his sight spinning.

The man in black pressed the tip of his blade into the center of Lestrade’s leather jerkin. Lestrade blinked in stunned disbelief and raised his hands, surrendering. The injury hurt less than the shame of defeat. God preserve the king if the man in black ever decided to invade Île-de-France.

“ _[J’en ai assez]()_ ,” Lestrade gasped. “Grant me a quick death, if you would.”

“I am sorely tempted to do so. You’ve cost me enough time, as it stands.” He dropped the sword. “Luckily for you, there is someone who would be very cross with me if I did.”

Lestrade squinted at him, enormously confused. “Who the devil are you?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” said the man in black.

“I’ve never heard of you.”

Sherlock smirked. “Consider this my introduction.”

The last thing Lestrade saw was the heavy pommel of the sword flying straight toward his head.

 

* * *

 

Late, late, _late_.

Sherlock checked his small brass compass as he bounded across the open country, harnessing every bit of speed his legs would give him. The sun was warm on his back as it reached its mid-morning perch, but there was room for no thought in his mind but _John_.

The trail had grown thin over the bare rock and low scrub of the Guilder foothills, but the hard-packed soil revealed his quarry had dwindled to three. The smallest footprints were the careful tread of a woman. The largest belonged to man in great haste, his inattention obvious where he’d caught the toe of his boot. Between them, the scrapes and scuffs told of an injured person being moved by force.

Sherlock frowned down at the uncharacteristic pattern of John's footprints. He was favoring his left leg and clearly in significant pain. The sooner Sherlock retrieved him, the better.

He’d spent days perfecting his now-obsolete plan. Everything had been in order, from the ship to the provisions to an escape route the prince’s oversized armada would never manage to navigate. John rode his rounds like clockwork, according to Sherlock's informants. He knew where John was supposed to be, and when, but as Sherlock waited in ambush along the route back to the castle, John had failed to appear.

That was when the backtracking started. Not long after, Sherlock had located the landing where John was taken. Of all the days for a troupe of buffoons to kidnap John, why did it have to be the precise day that Sherlock intended to do the same?

He was down for the count, but the war was far from won. Sherlock had the fastest ship within a thousand leagues, a lifetime of honed skills, and a frighteningly powerful incentive. All he had to do was get to John before the unthinkable happened.

Rocky outcroppings soon swallowed the path, narrowing into a winding crevice buttressed by high half-unearthed boulders. As Sherlock rounded a corner, a sharp whistle of air whizzed past his left ear. The sound was immediately followed by a magnificent _crack_ against the stone behind him and a shower of flinty shrapnel peppering his shirt.

Sherlock ducked into a defensive stance and turned. There on the bluff stood a young woman, her long plait whipping in the wind, of a build and weight that matched the female tracks. She casually tossed another small stone.

“That was a warning shot,” she called.

Sherlock straightened with a glare. After three years with nothing but the thought of John to sustain him, he wasn't about to let a _girl_ stand in the way.

“You'll let me pass if you know what's good for you, girl,” Sherlock demanded. "I'm in something of a hurry and in no mood to play games."

She jumped down from her higher position, landing with the grace of a cat. "My name is Molly, not _girl_." Her grip on the stone tightened. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

It took Sherlock a good thirty seconds to realize she was asking after Lestrade, the maudlin musketeer. “And what if I have?” Sherlock asked reproachfully.

She raised her fist, prepared to throw the stone. “I won’t miss this time.”

At such a velocity, a direct hit to a human skull would leave little to speak of in the afflicted area. Sherlock spread his hands in acquiescence. “He held his own. I imagine he'll have a monster of a headache when he wakes.”

Molly eyed Sherlock with suspicion. “He’s all right?”

“I’m not in the business of murder."

“Just stealing what’s already been stolen.”

"So it seems." Sherlock walked a cautious semi-circle around her, shuttering away the agitated flutter in his stomach as precious pursuit time slipped away. He jabbed a finger toward John’s track marks in the dirt. “What’ve you done to him?”

Her brow went into a furrow. “Done to him?”

“He’s injured," Sherlock said. "The lack of a blood trail indicates he’s travelling under his own power, but the pressure of his tread shows overreliance on his left leg. The tracks are clustered awkwardly, like he’s struggling for balance as you or your ringleader forces him along. I’ll ask once more, and only once. What’ve you done to him?”

Molly glanced at the traces Sherlock was pointing toward. “It’s his limp," she said. "I offered to carry him, but he refused.”

Sherlock quickly scanned her for signs of deceit, identifying none. But that was ridiculous – John didn’t _limp_. He’d never limped. Sherlock frowned at the deeply troubling thought. The cane he'd discovered on the Florin shoreline suddenly took on new relevance.

Sherlock's hand went to his sword. "Stand aside," he growled.

An obstinate expression took hold of Molly's face. “Hope told me to stop you, and so I’ll stop you.”

“You’re out of your depth.”

She held up the stone between thumb and forefinger. “I can kill you here and now, if you wish. It's nowhere near as fun as a good scrap, pelting villains from afar, but I'll do it if I have to."

Sherlock looked her up and down. “You'd prefer a fight? One on one?”

He had at least seven inches and a good two stone on her, but she nodded nonetheless. "It's been ages since I had a go."

Hand-to-hand combat seemed a surer bet than getting his skull smashed in at terminal velocity. She was stronger than she looked, being able to throw like that, but Sherlock liked his odds. "All right. Let’s do it your way.”

Sherlock shucked his sword belt and Molly her short coat. It was strange to see a woman wearing dusty trousers like a man, though in truth it was hardly the most concerning aspect of their meeting thus far. Molly cracked her knuckles and shook out her shoulders, and the practiced ease of her movements did not escape Sherlock's attention.

"You've done this before," Sherlock noted as he settled into a ready position. "Many times."

Molly stepped forward on nimble toes. "There's good money in the ring. As long as you keep winning, of course. Ready?"

"Always," Sherlock said.

He immediately lunged with his right fist, intending to knock Molly out with one swift blow, but she twirled on her feet, catching his arm as it sailed past her head. In one fluid movement she sent Sherlock careening through the air, and he had a long weightless moment to reflect upon his miscalculation before landing inelegantly on his back some five yards away.

Upside down, Molly cracked her knuckles again. "Oh, it's been far too long," she sighed, nostalgic.

Sherlock winced and rolled over before awkwardly clambering to his feet. His balance was rattled and it took a second for the land to right itself beneath him. "I'd say you entered the right profession," he said, staggering a bit as he shifted his mask back into place. "Is it natural, that strength?"

"Well, it's not _un_ natural, if that's what you mean," Molly answered. She bounced on the balls of her feet, patiently waiting for him to try his luck again. "I can't help how I was born."

Sherlock rounded on her again. He was no match for that strength, and her speed was incredible. A different strategy was required. "In that case, this _is_ a mystery," he began. "A young woman, gifted with extraordinary strength, chooses a life of petty entertainment. Why is that?"

Faint spots of pink grew in Molly's cheeks, and Sherlock homed in on the weakness like a bloodhound. He swiped at her once more, and again, but she bounded defensively out of the way.

Sherlock pressed his assault on both fronts. "Ostracized from your home, I'd say. That's when some slumming showman noticed your talents. Gave you a home and a family, of sorts, didn't he? Provided you kept on winning."

"Stop talking and fight!" Molly shouted. She launched a series of rapid attacks, trying to catch him by a limb again, and Sherlock only just avoided her clutches.

He dodged an erratic swing and countered with a shove, sending her stumbling. “Lonely, talented, looking for approval and a place to belong,” Sherlock pressed. "But they didn't accept you, did they? It wasn't long before they began circulating accusations of cheating. Faking. _Bed-warming_."

Molly spun low with a snarl and caught Sherlock at the ankles. He went sprawling to the dirt and Molly leapt onto his back, skillfully twisting his elbows back while choking him from behind. He flipped them both around, slamming her against the ground, but her ungodly strength refused to give way. Her legs and arms squeezed mercilessly, and just as the breath was about to be crushed from Sherlock's lungs, Molly let her grip loosen just a fraction.

“You’re here to rescue the prince, aren’t you?” she hissed in his ear.

She was deducing _him_? The question sent fury boiling in Sherlock's veins. Failure was a non-option while John still lived. He hadn't crossed thousands of leagues and hundreds of miles to die in some godforsaken outcropping at the hands of a woman half his size.

Sherlock snarled and sent them spinning again, this time knocking Molly into the ground with such force that her iron grasp on his arms gave way. He fumbled for leverage as she fought to regain control, and Sherlock got his hands free enough to exchange a barrage of punches. Molly managed to land a blow to the side of his head, disorientating him enough to capture him in a straddle.

"Definitely not relatives," she said around a bleeding split lip. "Not with those cheekbones. Does he owe you money?”

Grunting from the strain, Sherlock tried to slap her hands away, but Molly's experience had inescapably tipped the scales in her favor. He kicked at her, feebly, but her hands tightened around his neck and pinned him in place.

“Not family, and I’d have heard of a mercenary like you." She studied him intently. "There's only one possible explanation. You share a bond of love.”

Sherlock just looked at her because, frankly, he didn't have the option to look anywhere else. He braced for the final squeeze that would take the life from his body. The life he'd meant to give to John.

The hands disappeared from his throat.

"Go," Molly said.

He blinked up at her. "What?" he rasped.

Molly leaned back, relieving the pressure of her hold. "I've faced hundreds in the ring. I've seen greed in their eyes, and the joy of inflicting pain, and ego when they tried to show me my place. Your stupid mask doesn't hide it." She touched his chest, right over his heart. "You wear it here. I think you'd follow him into Hell itself."

"I'd die for him," Sherlock said.

Molly watched him, and her face grew soft as she recognized the truth of his words. "No need. I owe him one, but don't tell him I said that." She climbed off of Sherlock and offered a hand up.

He took it.

 

* * *

 

“There was a duel,” declared Prince Moriarty.

Count Moran stood clutching the reins of his horse alongside the other members of the small hunting party. The sun above had crested an hour or so ago. They were making poor time, even with the armada’s speed and the inexhaustible prince putting on a show as each clue was discovered. Hope had assured Moran that the doctor’s corpse would be found before sundown, but whatever had occurred in these cliff top ruins was not part of the plan.

“A duel?” asked Anderson, the prince’s insipid Keeper of the Keys.

"Between two masters," Prince Moriarty said, tracing the spiraling footprints. "The winner followed the tracks belonging to the prince and the rest of his captors. The loser retreated down the bluff."

Moran grimaced at his horse. Definitely not part of the plan.

"We should divide out forces," Anderson suggested. "Hunt them both down for interrogation."

Prince Moriarty rounded on him. "All that matters is finding my cousin's betrothed. We keep our party intact."

The assembled guards turned their attention to preparing their horses for the ride ahead. Moran came to Prince Moriarty's side, summoned by a subtle look of displeasure.

"Someone's meddling in my affairs," the prince hummed in a low, distracted voice. "I _loathe_ meddlers, Seb.”

“An agent of Guilder?” Moran guessed.

“No. This man is on no one's side but his own. His methods seem almost… familiar.”

“You know who it is?”

A spark of mania glinted dangerously in the prince’s dark eyes. He began muttering to himself and rubbing his hands together as a predator might prepare its claws in anticipation of a kill. When the prince got a look like that, it usually heralded an upsurge in guests for the Pit. Moran could hardly wait for a crack at this man, whoever he was.

Prince Moriarty snapped back to attention, lethal focus returning to his eyes. “Back to your horses!” he barked to the men. “Our quarry is alone and on foot. If any harm has come to the prince, the interloper will burn with the rest of Guilder.”

 

* * *

 

A picnic awaited Sherlock just over the lip of the ridgeline.

He knew it was coming before he saw it. The fresh tracks grew frantic and garbled, and at one point it looked as if the larger man had spent a solid few minutes worriedly pacing. The one with the limp was tiring, by the increasing length of the drag marks, and soon would have to take a rest. Sherlock’s confidence lifted and he sensed himself closing in for the final confrontation.

Before long, he spotted the site of the showdown. Two figures in the distance were assembled around a flat stone serving as table. One was an elderly fellow, who seemed to be assessing Sherlock from afar with grim intent, and the other was John, who had a knife held to his throat.

"Slowly, now," called Jefferson Hope. "Wouldn't want my hand to slip."

The blood began pounding in Sherlock's ears as he approached with generous caution, one gloved hand hovering above his sword hilt and the other raised in a signal of truce. His eyes drifted to John, unhelpfully trying to evaluate his condition from an absurd distance, and Sherlock had to force them back to Hope, fearful of giving him cause to cut John's throat.

Ten paces from the table, Sherlock stopped. Hope had set up a small spread of cheese and olives, along with two wine goblets and a jug of red. The stashed meal, the rope on the cliff – it was all painting a picture of a devious pre-planned scheme. Hope had a purpose in kidnapping John and, Sherlock wagered, a deadly end in mind.

For the first time in three long years, Sherlock looked at John. His tailored salmon doublet complimented his broad shoulders and his dark riding trousers were particularly well-cut. John was leaner than Sherlock remembered, and greyer.

He was also blindfolded, gagged, and his arms were restrained with enough rope to harness a small horse. John looked exceptionally pissed off, and Sherlock resisted a smirk. The moment John Watson stopped fighting was the moment there was nothing left to rescue.

"Come," Hope said. "Sit. Let us discuss this as civilized men."

"There's nothing to discuss," Sherlock said.

Hope tilted his head with affected disappointment. "Now, now, my friend. You're ignoring the basic principles of the market economy. I've got something that you want. You're supposed to make me an offer."

"How about I kill you where you sit?"

He chuckled mirthlessly. "Then we'll both lose our valuable merchandise." The knife's blade pressed into John's throat, drawing a trickle of blood. John didn't react, but Sherlock had to forcibly suppress the bubbling memories of all the times he'd kissed John in that exact spot, ran his tongue there, whispered into the warmth of his skin...

Sherlock folded his arms to keep them from shaking. "It seems we're at an impasse."

“You killed Lestrade and you killed Molly," recounted Hope. "I don’t doubt that you would kill me in a trial of physical combat. And unfortunately, you would stand no chance at all in a trial of intellectual combat.”

Sherlock internally bristled at the assertion of his stupidity. He refused to let it show, though, and focused on the more useful aspect of Hope’s statement. Hubris was good. Hubris could be exploited. “Wouldn’t I?” he challenged.  

“Everyone thinks they’re clever until the moment they don’t. I think circles around ants like you. Like him.” Hope glanced at John with distaste. “Proper geniuses often go unrecognized in their time. Are you a proper genius?”

“There’s nothing proper about me,” Sherlock said. “As for the genius part... I get by.”

"Then, by all means, let us have a meeting of the minds."

“For the prince?” Sherlock asked, eyes narrowing.

Hope grinned. “For the prince. To the death.”


	4. Chapter 4

John let out an indignant snort when the stranger said, “You're on."

Trapped blood pounded in his arms and fingertips beneath the constriction of the ropes. Snatches of light invaded around the edges of his blindfold, but the gaps were too small to make out any details of his environment. His leg burned from overexertion and he worried his teeth on the saliva-soaked gag like a horse with a bit, scheming for an opportunity. He wasn't a piece of bloody contraband to be parlayed, and he’d teach that lesson to whoever claimed him at the end of this absurd confrontation.

“I don’t believe the prince approves of our terms,” the stranger noted with amusement.

The blade at John’s throat twisted, threatening to slice open his windpipe with only a fraction more pressure.

“He'll be quiet or he'll be dead,” Hope warned. “Pour the wine.”

The knife eased up and John reluctantly kept his silence as he listened to the sounds of a popping cork and the flow of liquid.

He’d been waiting to feel the slide of a knife between his ribs from the moment Hope ordered him bound and gagged by Molly's hand. After that he'd instructed her to stay behind and finish what Lestrade had apparently failed to do, incurring a queasy edge of adrenaline in John's stomach. Hope was clearly neurotic; the sort of man who'd cut his losses rather than take a gamble on the unknown quantity pursuing them. John heavily suspected that Hope's ultimate intention for him was a brutal death in the Guilder frontier, but the knife hadn’t come as Hope's agitation grew. At least, not until John had been led to some sort of flat seat in what appeared to be the middle of a field, soon joined by the aromatic scents of good wine and cured cheese.

The stranger had to be the man in black spotted by Lestrade during their ascent up the Cliffs of Insanity. Who else could it be? None of his captors had commented on seeing anyone else out in the wilds, and it was impossible for Prince Moriarty’s men to overtake them so quickly.

John hadn't yet worked out the man in black's angle. He was evidently a highly-skilled man, having got past Lestrade and Molly with little trouble, but competence did not equate to a virtuous agenda. As John saw it, he could wait to be killed by Hope or he could take his chances with the man in black. It was possible he only intended to ransom John rather than kill him. If not, overconfidence in his abilities might provide an easier avenue of escape. Either way, it seemed a sight better than remaining trussed up at Hope's mercy.

John angled his head, trying to hear the conversation over the sound of his own muffled breathing.

“Now, what’s this about intellectual combat?” mused the man in black. An foreign accent inflected his baritone voice in a muted sort of way, as if amalgamated from a dozen different lands and ports, but the note of tedium beneath it all triggered something deep in John’s memory, itching at his brain like a speck of dust in the eye.

“I offer you a game with one move and one winner,” Hope said. There came a faint clacking of small objects within glass. “I have, in this vial, two identical doses. One is a perfectly harmless sugar pill. The other contains deadly iocane powder. Colorless, odorless, tasteless. Any who digest it die within seconds. Examine them for yourself, if you wish.”

There was a sharp rattle as, presumably, Hope tossed the vial to the man in black. The lid popped and a minute or two of silence followed, until the man in black said, “I detect no difference between the two.”

“Then here is your challenge: drop one into each goblet, allow them to disintegrate, and make your choice. The game ends when we both drink and one of us walks away with the prince, and the other does not.”

“How do I know _both_ aren’t poisoned,” asked the man in black, “and you haven’t spent years building up some ridiculous immunity or something?”

John thought the man in black's observation a rather shrewd one, but Hope simply laughed. The sound was despicable.

“You don’t,” said Hope.

"That's not fair, is it?" complained the man in black.

"I can kill him right now and settle the whole thing, if you'd like," offered Hope. The blade at John's neck once again bit into his skin, forcing him to lift his chin away.

"No, fine, I'll play," the man in black quickly relented, and John might've sworn he heard a tenuous note of worry in his deep voice. "Here, you see?"

There were two plops and two fizzes, and the game for John's life was begun.

"Well?" prodded Hope, easing the knife's edge away from John's throat. "Make your move."

"Give me a moment," the man in black muttered, and John was struck with the mental image of the him leaning back, one hand at his chin, fingers pressed to his lips as he considered the puzzle.

He was probably doing nothing of the sort. After all, John was undeniably biased when it came to the thinking poses of geniuses.

“You’re the sort of man who carries around poisoned pills in his back pocket," said the man in black after a stretch of contemplative silence. "What for? You couldn't have brought them for me, specifically, so why is it you had them?”

"Never hurts to prepare for any and all eventualities," Hope said.

“No, that's not it. Not entirely." There was a whisper of fabric as the man in black shifted where he sat. "You’re always on the hunt, aren’t you? Always trying to prove yourself the more clever man.”

The blade fell away from John's throat. “I don’t need to prove anything," Hope scoffed. "My genius speaks for itself.”

"Does it?"

"Incontrovertibly."

"Because I'd say you're nothing more than a common toady for hire."

"I'll have you know that I am a master criminal," Hope spat, resentment rising in his voice.  "You've heard of Aristotle? Da Vinci? Newton? They are infants, all of them. Outclassed and outmatched in every conceivable sense of the words."

"I think you were telling the truth, earlier," the man in black answered, and John had to admire his preternatural calm despite the tension of the moment. "One is poisoned and the other isn't. Your ego's far too gigantic for it to be otherwise. This is how you prove your genius to yourself, isn't it?"

John heard the smile on Hope's lips as clearly as if he'd seen it. "And I've never lost."

"Past performance does not guarantee future results."

"Prove me wrong, then," Hope challenged. "Do something _clever_."

The man in black stayed quiet for a painfully long time. There were few people in the world who could do what he'd already done, overcome the things he'd endured, and John couldn't help but silently will him to work it out, what with John's continued existence on the line.

"Here's my wager," the man in black eventually said. "You don't actually know which goblet contains the poison. But _I_ do.”

Hope snorted with outrage. "That’s ridiculous! Impossible! The furthest thing from the truth. I know exactly where the poison is."

"I think not. I think you're relying on chance or God or your own sheer arrogance to carry you through."

"Listen, boy," Hope intoned. "When people like us reach my age, there are no accidents about it. When it comes to— good God, what could _that_ be?"

The man in black shifted quickly. "What?"

John barely caught the slight vibration of goblet bases sliding over stone. Christ, was Hope _cheating_?

"I don't see anything," the man in black said cautiously.

“Oh, must’ve been the leaves moving in the wind,” Hope said. “Swore I saw something. Never mind that, now. It’s time we drank.”

A thorn of panic pierced John’s chest and he launched into an animated complaint through his gag, twisting at his bonds. He had to tell him, somehow, had to warn him—

The knife returned to John's throat. He got the message and ceased fighting. This was going to end badly, wasn't it?

"What's wrong with him?" asked the man in black.

"The prince must be getting impatient," Hope deflected, as if nothing were amiss. "Have you made your choice or not?"

"I don't have to," the man in black said mildly. "I already know which of us is going to die."

"In that case, shall we drink from our own goblets?"

"All right."

John's heart was beating a mile a minute as he listened to the men reach for their cups. Did the man in black know Hope had switched out their wine? How could he act so damned nonchalant about this? He was toying with John's fate – not to mention his _own_ _life_ – as if it were nothing.

And yet, somehow, for no good reason at all, John felt compelled to trust in him.

There came a clatter of glass knocking against stone, then a rolling sound and the _thump_ of an object hitting the grass between John's feet.

“Oh, there goes the wine. How clumsy of me," said the man in black. "Would you mind? No sense in wasting such a fine year."

Hope gave a displeased sigh and moved in his seat, brushing John's trouser leg as he reached for the bottle, and John knew exactly what the man in black intended for him to do.

John listened closely, estimating distances with only his ears for guidance, until he heard the clink of a hand on glass.

He struck then, right on target, catching his legs around Hope’s neck and forcefully leveraging them both to ground with a twist of his hips. Hope shouted in surprise and John grunted around his gag as they landed on dry summer grass, wriggling to lock his knees together as Hope's flailing arms desperately tried to push them away.

Then he squeezed.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock watched in awe as John rid the world of Jefferson Hope.

They were locked in a death grip, John's crossed thighs efficiently crushing Hope's windpipe and blocking blood flow to his brain, while Hope scrabbled helplessly at the stone block serving as a table. His cheeks purpled under the strain, eyes bulging and mouth gaping, and in his panic to survive even dared look to Sherlock for help that was not coming. John's face, though obscured, was the very image of merciless determination.

Hope hadn’t a clue who he had tied up next to him. The deadliest thing at the table was not the poison, but John himself. His error had proved fatal.

Sherlock could name on one hand the people he knew who could manage such a takedown, and here John was doing it with neither his sight nor his arms.

Eventually, Hope stopped moving. Sherlock waited until John released his legs and rolled himself away from the corpse before finally rising from his seat. He worked his way around the picnic, sidestepping the puddle of wine from the overturned goblets.

John lay panting through his gag in the grass, still blindfolded. During the struggle he'd managed to shift his arms beneath the rope, and they were now wrenched behind his back at an uncomfortable angle. Sherlock stood over him, watching his chest rise and fall beneath the taut leather of his doublet. The temptation to touch him was unbearable.

But then Sherlock’s gaze drifted to the mark of the royal tailor in the seam of John's collar, the expensive hand-stitched leather, the liberal use of exotic dyes. John was a prince of Florin and betrothed to another. The next moments had to be navigated with delicacy.

Sherlock experimentally nudged John with his boot. He flinched violently at the contact, like a trapped animal full of self-preserving aggression but unsure where to direct it. Sherlock used his heel to roll John onto his back, earning him an annoyed grunt, and took up Hope's knife where he'd laid it on the picnic table. Sherlock knelt to carefully cut through the gag, and when he saw that familiar mouth below the blindfold, he felt a terrible urge to kiss John right there.

Then John’s mouth tightened into a frown of distrust. "If you mean to kill me, get on with it,” he growled.

Under different circumstances, having John at his mercy like this might prove a stimulating exercise, but as it stood John still thought him a stranger and was more likely to kill him than to kiss him if he tried anything. He needed to bring John back from the brink of his survival instincts without getting himself harmed in the process.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Sherlock said, adeptly maintaining his mimicry of the strange and interesting accents he'd picked up during his time away. “You’re far more valuable as ransom.”

John didn't answer that, but Sherlock caught the subtle flexion of his muscles as the tension loosened in his body. John's breathing began to even out, and it looked as though he believed Sherlock's words.

Sherlock yanked off his blindfold and John blinked as the midday sun hit his eyes. Those perfect, expressive, dark blue eyes that Sherlock had been reminded of every time he gazed out at the stormy sea. They were filled with suspicion now as John analyzed Hope’s dead body and his new abductor.

“Who are you?” John asked, squinting up at him.

Sherlock fought back the beginnings of a frown. It was ludicrous to think the world would go unchanged in the three years he’d been away. Seasons passed and time marched on, and he’d anticipated a difference in his homeland and the people who inhabited it, but John was constancy itself. That he could look so troublingly different since Sherlock last saw him was borderline unthinkable.

This did not look like his John. His John was kind-eyed, bright of smile, shabbily clothed. Not this raw, detached pretender hiding in John’s skin. The emptiness of his eyes chilled Sherlock to the bone.

John had not waited for him, as he’d promised to do. There was no telling whether his John was still buried within this unrecognizable person. Sherlock let his expression slide into a cold mask. Until John’s loyalties could be determined, he had to continue the sham.

“I am your captor," Sherlock said, aiming for a callous tone. "Come now, your highness, I thought you were cleverer than that.”

Interestingly, John took more offense at being called ‘your highness’ than the insult to his intelligence. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to see through Sherlock’s disguise, but there was no hint of recognition there. Despite Sherlock’s half-uncovered face, John saw only what he wished to see: an adversary.

"No harm will come to you as long as you do as I say," Sherlock continued. “I’m going to release you, now. If you run, I will catch you. If you fight, I will overpower you. Comply with my demands, and by day’s end I will have made a tidy profit and you will be returned to your fiancée’s loving embrace.”

Sherlock’s words provoked no notable reaction besides a mute nod of consent, but the sound of the cogs turning inside John’s head was deafening. But John’s plots tended toward the simplistic variety and, reasonably confident in his ability to outmaneuver him, Sherlock cut him free of his bonds.

John spent a good fifteen minutes massaging his left thigh once he regained use of his arms. It pained him badly, going by his slight grimace, and Sherlock turned a diagnostic eye toward the leg. Had he been injured while Sherlock was away? He thought not; John’s leg was in perfect health when Sherlock had left him, and his informants hadn’t reported knowledge of any significant accidents or injuries during their time apart. Of course, the informants hadn’t mentioned the limp, either, indicating they thought it a long-standing condition. But limps didn’t just _appear_. It was in his head, Sherlock decided, before filing it away for consideration when more pressing matters weren’t at hand.

John stood, and there was something of a wobble in his step. His leg was spent and as much as Sherlock disliked seeing him in pain, he felt an inward sense of relief. John’s trouble with his leg might be the saving grace for Sherlock’s plan. He needed to interact with John in an objective way to get the information he needed, and any advantage that reduced the potential use of deadly force on either side was a welcome turn-up.

Sherlock kept his distance and rested one hand on his sword as John stretched, and he caught the flick of John’s gaze as it touched on the subtle threat before rising back up.

It was odd, John regarding him as though he were a stranger. There was none of the warmth that usually lit his eyes. John had never looked at him like that, not once since they’d met, and for that reason alone Sherlock wanted nothing more than to rip off his mask and reveal himself.

John toed at the upturned goblet near Hope’s corpse. “Which one had it?”

Sherlock blinked. “What?”

“Which one had the poison?”

Sherlock glanced at the tipped-over goblets leaking their last drops of wine into the grass. Perhaps at a later time he could return and test the soil to find out which one it was.

“His, obviously,” Sherlock said with confidence. “He switched them out just like I planned.”

John just looked at him. “You’ve no idea, have you?”

“Of course I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“How would you know? You were blindfolded.”

John folded his arms and lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Listen, mate. Between us, I’m the expert on people who attempt to look ingenious and end up failing spectacularly. Believe me.”

What did he mean by that? Sherlock nearly asked him, but he suspected it would give too much away.

Instead, Sherlock busied himself by collecting up the rope that had been used to restrain John, coiling it into a loop and slinging it over his shoulder.

"Will we be needing that?" John asked.

"Certainly, if you get out of hand."

"Prince Moriarty will catch you, you know," John said. "If I don't take care of things first."

"I'd like to see him try," Sherlock said with a derisive laugh.

"He's the world's greatest huntsman," John hotly insisted. "Don't think your impressive feats with the cliff and the poison and beating Molly and Lestrade will mean anything when you come face to face with him."

Sherlock regarded him rakishly. "So you think me impressive, your highness?"

The tips of John's ears went a lovely shade of crimson. "Don't call me that," he grumbled, turning away to hide his embarrassment.

Suppressing a smile, Sherlock drew his sword and prodded John with the hilt. "Walk," he ordered. " _Your highness_."

 

* * *

 

Prince Moriarty circled his horse among the broken boulders, careful to avoid trampling the chaotic pattern of imprints left in the dirt. “A contest of strength happened here,” he said, “between a man of considerable training and woman of considerable talent.”

“Who won?” Anderson inquired.

The prince’s eyes scanned the ground. “It was a draw. The male participant was allowed to continue his pursuit of the prince and the Guilderian who took him.”

“Pardon me, my lord,” Moran chimed in. “He was _allowed_ to escape? What came of the woman?”

“She retreated south towards the cliffs. Our mysterious friend persists in his hunt.”

Moran frowned, reining his impatient horse. Jefferson Hope’s promised team of professionals was not proving their worth. Falling victim to an upstart and then letting him go? Moran would have stern words with Hope when this was finished. Preferably over a rack of sharpened iron spikes.

Less than an hour later, those plans were as dead as Jefferson Hope.

Moran recognized the features of the body before the hunting party reached the quaint picnic. He went along with their curious inspection all the same, pointing out the toppled wine goblets and flies buzzing about the dried-out cheese. The prince shot him a questioning look and Moran gave a subtle nod. Yes, this had been his man.

"What killed him?" asked one of the lieutenants.

Prince Moriarty dabbed a finger in the spilled wine tasted it. "Poison," he announced dramatically. "Iocane, I'd wager. Our prey is devious, to trick a man into drinking it."

Moran eyed the bruising hidden beneath Hope's collar. Clearly, he'd been strangled by someone who knew what they were doing, but poison made for a more sensational turn of events. The Florinese public would go wild at the very thought.  

"The prince was tied," Prince Moriarty continued, pulling a frayed bit of fiber from the grass. "His ropes were cut and he was driven... that way."

"How large is their head start?" Moran cut in.

"These tracks are fresh. Less than three hours."

The prince glanced up, his dark eyes tracing his quarry's trail as it led off into the distance. He was a clever man who enjoyed his puppetry and games, but Moran rarely witnessed the sort of gleaming anticipation that had come alive in his features. A cobra on the verge of a killing strike.

Prince Moriarty stood at last. “Onward!” he ordered, leaping back into the saddle and spurring his horse. “We haven’t a moment to lose!”

 

* * *

 

Considering his recent spate of dismal luck, John was reluctant to believe that he'd actually made the right choice in siding with the man in black. But here he was, being escorted at sword-point without any blindfolds or bindings, very much alive and intent on staying that way.

If it weren't for his bad leg, he'd have sprinted off the moment they got into open country. The man in black seemed to have a sixth sense for the damned thing, because whenever the twinges of pain within the muscle started to push John’s threshold of tolerance, his captor abruptly called for a halt and rest. He observed John with unnerving scrutiny as he worked the ache away, and once he even tried to fashion a walking stick out of a spindly tree branch, but John had snapped it in half and thrown it away. The slower John forced them to go, the sooner Prince Moriarty would catch up and put an end to this unpleasant adventure.

When he was able to walk, John meditated upon the identities of his kidnappers. He'd fought alongside mercenaries in his time overseas, and his instincts told him Hope and his gang were nothing more than that. But who had hired them in the first place? Who wanted John dead badly enough to stage an abduction? He resolved to keep his eyes open when he got back to Florin Castle.

The man in black constituted the greater mystery. John resented how the man’s presence nagged at the edge of his thoughts, constantly hovering there as if waiting for John to snatch it up and make sense of it. There was something unsettlingly familiar about him, the way he moved and behaved. It was like an aura dragging John into its orbit, inescapable, as if from a dream...

A dream...

John stopped in his tracks.

They were crossing a ridge that formed the western rim of a large and rather perilous ravine. Carpets of purple heather dotted the verdant grasses of the hillsides, broken here and there by granite boulders. A shallow rocky creek wound its way through the basin. John took his eyes off the scenery and turned, staring at the man in black through the lens of his revelation.

“I know who you are,” John said.

The man in black's half-mask hid any reaction that might be playing through his eyes. “Do you?” he asked, calm and even.

“You’re the Dread Pirate Redbeard.”

His mouth twitched – was that disappointment? – but the brief movement was quickly replaced by a patronizing smirk. “How is that possible? As you can see, I am clean-shaven.”

“You’re Redbeard all the same,” John insisted.

The man in black crooked his head, amused. “You’re not a complete fool, I’ll grant you that. The Dread Pirate Redbeard, at your service,” he said, and performed a mocking bow.

It was one thing to suspect his captor’s identity, but quite another to actually know it. A quiet fury ignited deep in John's gut as he studied Redbeard, but he could not bring himself to speak another word. Hadn't he dreamed of confronting the pirate lord? Everything he'd wanted to say seemed to vanish in an instant. One did not expect to casually cross paths with the devil.

“What’s the matter, your highness?" Redbeard inquired as John’s silence stretched out. "Do you disapprove of my chosen career?”

John blinked at him. “You... killed someone. Someone I knew. During a raid on a merchant vessel nearly three years ago. You probably don’t even remember him.”

Redbeard brought a gloved hand to his chin, tapping it thoughtfully. “It's true, I kill a lot of people and take a lot of ships. I couldn't possibly recall _all_ of them. What was his name?”

“Sherlock. He was just a poor laborer. Barely worth your notice.”

“He was important to you, this Sherlock?”

John nodded.

“I see. Another trophy in your hall of conquests, was he?”

“No! He was… we were...” John looked away bitterly. “I don’t speak of him. Not anymore, I don’t…”

Redbeard seemed exceptionally interested in what John was about to say. “You were… what?”

He refused to talk about Sherlock with his own fiancée, for Christ’s sake, and here he was on the verge of confiding in the pirate who had murdered him. It was all sorts of wrong. He shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. But as much as John despised Redbeard, the fact remained that he was the only person in the world who shared this dark piece of his past.

John let it rise in his eyes. Everything he kept shoved down in the deepest reaches of his heart, the things he’d rather die than show to those who couldn’t understand.

“I loved him. Desperately." John swallowed back the pain of saying it. "I still do.”

There was no cutting remark waiting for John in response to his admission. Redbeard did not betray any reaction at all, but simply held John’s gaze for an agonizing length of time.

“Now that you mention him, I do remember,” Redbeard eventually said. He rested one hand on his sword hilt and looked out over the grassy slopes of the ravine. “He spoke of you at the end, you know. He knelt on the ship’s deck, bloodied by my work, while all the other survivors wept and screamed for mercy. He, alone, looked me in the eye and said ‘please’. ‘Please, I must live’.”

“You’re lying,” John snapped. “Sherlock would never beg for his life.”

The pirate turned, and an unreadable expression flitted across his masked face. “That’s where you’re wrong, because he certainly begged for your sake. I stayed my blade for a time and let him speak, due to the strangeness of his plea. He spoke of a brave, kind, compassionate apprentice physician who, against all reason, chose to love him. I can only assume he meant you. He continued on to describe a man of unending loyalty who had nothing in this world and yet deserved everything. That was his purpose, he said. To repay you for saving his life and teaching him what it means to love so fiercely that one’s mind and heart can never belong to another.”

John squeezed shut his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He was delusional to believe in your faithfulness. You’ve never truly loved anyone, least of all him. It’s clear to me now. Tell me, how long after he’d left did you wait before jumping into bed with the next harlot who caught your fancy?”

John’s eyes snapped open in a blaze of monumental fury. “How dare you,” he hissed, stalking right up to the pirate where he stood at the ravine’s edge. “Sherlock was my world. He was everything to me and you stole him away in cold blood! When your blade fell, we died together, him and I. What remains is simply transport, as he would’ve said, so how _dare_ you judge me—”

Redbeard jolted backward, taken off balance by John’s sudden aggression. “John—“

“No! How dare you presume to know what I’ve lost?” John pressed. “How each day torments me? I refuse to take my own life out of respect for his, because he would never forgive something like that. You could never understand. How could you? You’re just a despicable, blind murderer who snuffed out the brightest light in this world and you can die for all I care!”

He shoved Redbeard, hard, with the full intention of sending him to his death. The sun hit a flash of silvery eyes, gone wide with alarm beneath the mask, and as Redbeard toppled over the edge of the ravine, one single phrase made its way back to John’s ears.

“You’re an _idiot_ —”

Redbeard’s flailing body hadn’t made it a third of the way down before the gravity of John’s mistake sunk in. Only one person in John’s life had ever called him that, and he was now well on his way to certain injury at the bottom of the ravine.

John did the only thing he could do: he jumped right after him.

The severity of the incline eliminated any hope of a controlled slide.  John tumbled with reckless abandon, pummeled by jutting rocks and lumps of earth from all sides, but it was less than he deserved if he had, in fact, just hurled the love of his life down a ravine out of sheer ignorance.

John rolled to a dizzy stop at the edge of the streambed and scrambled to his knees. Redbeard lay nearby, sprawled on his back in a patch of grass amidst the heather, with both the rope and his sword scattered haphazardly above him on the hillside. He moved a bit as John crawled toward him. It couldn't be him. It was impossible. He'd _died_ —

John's heart leapt into his throat as he knelt and peeled away the man in black's mask. A mop of dark hair flowed free, curling over his forehead above pale eyes and familiar cheekbones, and all at once John was staring into the long-lost face of Sherlock Holmes.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock’s ungraceful fall down the ravine left him more or less rattled, and it wasn’t until he felt the cool breeze prickling his scalp and saw John’s stunned eyes gazing down at him that he realized he’d come to a full stop.

In one breathless moment their eyes were locked, and in the next John’s hands were fretfully roaming Sherlock's face.

“Sherlock, God, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry,” John said, stricken. “Are you all right? I should have seen it, I should have known…”

“That a dead man had returned to you?” Sherlock teased in his natural voice. He winced a little. “You see things, John, but you never observe.”

And then John was kissing him, right there amongst the heather, with all the pent-up passion he’d shown to Redbeard now diverted into Sherlock, and the memory of all the nights Sherlock had spent longing for John receded like a fog against the rush of warmth and home and happiness. Sherlock encircled John with his arms and pulled him closer (not nearly close enough). It seemed they were intent on devouring each other, lips joined with bruising possessiveness after so long apart.

Eventually, the time came to breathe and they lay gasping into one another’s mouths, refusing to separate any more than was absolutely necessary. Sherlock flung off his gloves and spread his bare hands along the well-known lines of John's back, sweeping up his leather-clad shoulder blades to stroke the nape of his neck. John shuddered beneath his touch, entirely overwhelmed. 

“I asked you to wait for me,” Sherlock said as he threaded his fingers into John’s hair. “Why didn’t you wait?”

John’s fists clenched into the black silk of Sherlock’s shirt, shaking despite the tightness of his grasp. He pressed his forehead against Sherlock’s brow and forced out a difficult breath. “Christ, I thought you were dead,” he said, the words weighted with a ragged edge. “Three years, Sherlock. _Three years_ and you couldn’t be bothered to write or send word…”

“It wasn’t an option,” Sherlock gently assured him. “You must believe me when I say I wanted nothing more than to come home.”

John looked up, and the immensity of his grief lingered in his eyes. “I thought you were _dead_ ,” he whispered again.

“You know me, John. I’m indestructible." Sherlock dared a smirk. "A silly little thing like death isn’t enough to stop me from returning to you.”

A hint of a smile rose on John’s face, breaking the tension of his obvious heartache, and Sherlock's chest thrummed with the sensation of soaring.  

“Never leave me again,” John hummed into the corner of his mouth. “Never again, Sherlock. I wouldn’t survive it.”

“I won’t," Sherlock said. "I’ve crossed the world to reclaim you, and I don’t intend to let anything else stand in my way.”

John sank right back into him, finding Sherlock's mouth and easing into a lazy splay, knees and elbows shifting apart to hook around Sherlock. It was positive sign and Sherlock endeavored to soothe him further, kneading slow circular patterns into the tense set of his muscles. The fingers gripping Sherlock's shirt gradually loosened, sliding free.

"God, I've missed your touch," John sighed, a warm breath against Sherlock's cheek.

Sherlock grunted his agreement and snaked a hand to the front of John’s doublet to pick at its fasteners. It had been so long since he last burned like this for John, let the sweet agony of his touch clog up his brain and light a flame in the pit of his belly, like the first taste of opium after years without and _oh_ —

John's fingers had found their way into Sherlock's hair, lightly raking his scalp and sending a cascade of shivers down his backbone. Sherlock let out a hiss of pleasure as he momentarily struggled with the clasps. John chuckled into his mouth, clearly amused by the undiminished effectiveness of one of his old tricks, and Sherlock tugged harder at the doublet until it gave way. 

His fingers slipped inside the split leather, and Sherlock abruptly broke the kiss.

John had never been an especially sizable person (at least, not physically), but Sherlock furrowed his brow as he palmed the pale linen undershirt, feeling the firm warmth of John's abdomen flexing beneath his hand. He’d dropped over a stone since Sherlock last touched him.

It made him bizarrely angry that no one had looked after John during his absence. Even when they had so little, Sherlock always ensured John was properly fed and rested.

John lifted onto one elbow and blinked down at him, expression turned sober. Surely, he was aware of what had caused Sherlock's dismay.

Sherlock searched John’s lean features, studied his grey-streaked hair, considered the existence of a limp where none had been before. Such changes did not happen naturally in the span of three years. Not without trauma.

“Oh, John,” he murmured. “What did I do to you?”

John smiled sadly. “You left me.”

The pieces of the puzzle were slotting into place. Had he known what would happen to John…

“I should’ve got out sooner," Sherlock decided. "I shouldn’t have waited.”

“Yes,” John agreed.

He'd gone away in hopes of becoming the sort of man John needed him to be. Apparently, he already was.

Sherlock brought up a hand to touch John's face, tracing his thumb along the strong line of his jaw and over the soft expanse of his lower lip. John leaned into the cup of his palm and looked at him, a sigh of solace alive in the depths of his eyes. He was gorgeous. He'd always been gorgeous. Sherlock could gaze at him for days, drifting along in the space between his every heartbeat, anchored by the weight of his presence alone. He'd forgotten, all this time, just how achingly whole he became in John's arms.

John unconsciously wetted his lips, tinted pink from Sherlock’s attentions, and the heaviness of his gaze sent a warm flush tingling through Sherlock's skin. The heat growing between them was nearly too much to bear. John captured him again, a fierce press of his mouth, teeth and tongue and all, and Sherlock groaned his enthusiasm deep in his throat.

John kissed him with feverish abandon, his breath coming hot and fast, as Sherlock eased the open doublet off his shoulders and down his arms, freeing him from the cling of the sleeves. His loose undershirt was tucked into his trousers and Sherlock indulgently spread his hands down the curve of John's arse, curling his fingers around the inner part of his thighs, before hitching him up. John let out a sharp gasp at the wonderful drag of friction, and it stoked the coiling heat in the base of Sherlock's spine. 

He was already as hard as he’d been in years, but Sherlock ignored the mounting need between his legs and sought the front of John’s trousers, fingertips brushing the hot bulge that strained against the leather.

The contact set John squirming on top of him. " _Sherlock_ ," he growled, voice rough with arousal. John had even less patience than Sherlock when it came to a good tease, especially when  uncertain whether Sherlock intended to follow through.

”Don’t worry,” Sherlock said, grinning, as he reached into the folds of his sash. "I've come prepared." 

John raised his flushed face and glanced between Sherlock and the vial he produced. The blue of his eyes had been almost entirely swallowed up by the black. “You brought that?”

“I told you, John. I came to reclaim you wherever I found you.” Sherlock gave him a suggestive full-palmed grope and felt his erection twitch where it was trapped.

John's response was either an errant hiccough or an aborted sob, but nevertheless imparted his approval of Sherlock's forethought.

He was practically crawling up Sherlock’s body, seeking his touch, as Sherlock began unlacing him. The riding trousers complimented him well, and through the haze of arousal clouding Sherlock's brain he made note to ensure John wore them again in the future. John impatiently kicked off his boots and wriggled out of his trousers as soon as they were loose enough, somehow maintaining mouth-to-mouth contact the entire time. 

With John's arms draped around his shoulders, Sherlock pushed them into an upright sitting position, his firm thighs straddling Sherlock's lap and freed erection rubbing at the front of Sherlock’s breeches. They groaned together, the weight of John nearly undoing Sherlock right on the spot.

His hands pushed under the hem of John’s shirt and wandered upward to catalogue the new topography of the body he'd known so well. There was a new tautness to be found, but all of the landmarks remained the same; the raised scar on his left shoulder, the dip of his navel, the pebbling of his nipples as Sherlock's thumbs skimmed over them.

John shed Sherlock of his sash and clawed open the buttons of his flies. Theirs erections met in a press of slick heat and Sherlock choked back an instinctual moan, the scent of John’s sweat and arousal bringing him frightening close to the edge. John was gasping for air and kissing him madly, desperate for it, and Sherlock fought to regain composure, refusing to finish in so clumsy a way. He fumbled for the vial in the grass, loosening the lid, and dipped two fingers into its contents before bringing his hand back around. 

John whimpered like a wounded animal when Sherlock breached him with the length of one finger. His head fell back, exposing his throat, and Sherlock pressed in to suckle the damp hollow of his collarbone. John wriggled in his lap, eliciting soft tortured sounds as Sherlock patiently worked into him. 

"Who else?" Sherlock grunted into his beating pulse.

John tilted his head down, blinking with disorientated pleasure. "What?"

Sherlock buried a second finger beside the first, reveling in the clenching heat of John’s body. "Who else had you while I was gone?"

“No one since you,” John gasped, writhing on his fingers. “Oh, _God_ , there could never be anyone but you...”

The words seared into Sherlock’s ears. John didn't have it in him to lie, not like this. His fingers slid wetly from John and he grabbed him underneath each thigh, urging him up. John went eager and breathless, rising just long enough for Sherlock to align himself before sinking down onto him in one decadent slide.

He hadn’t remembered how good it could be, John pinioned wholly on his cock, the heady scent of him overwhelming his thoughts, their short tight, breaths the only sounds between them. John’s erection, trapped between their abdomens, leaked freely against Sherlock’s shirt.

Strong, lovely hands lifted Sherlock’s chin to met John’s gaze. He looked as wrecked as Sherlock felt.

“Tell me you’re mine,” Sherlock pleaded.

John kissed him, deep and deliberate, before trailing his mouth along the curve of Sherlock’s cheek and down toward his ear. "I'm yours," he purred, "now _fuck me_ and prove it."

John threaded his hands into his hair again and rocked his hips in Sherlock’s lap. A column of heat shot up Sherlock’s backbone like gunpowder in a barrel and, treating John’s request with all the grave consideration it deserved, he promptly rolled them over in the grass and planted John on his back.

He slipped out of John in the effort but quickly regained his seating between John’s parted legs. John groaned and arched beneath him, squirming as Sherlock’s cock filled him to the hilt, teething indiscriminately along Sherlock’s neck and jaw. His mouth was wet and warm when Sherlock found it again, and his world narrowed down to John, John, always John, as he rutted into him like a feral thing he'd become. John’s skin and heat and taste, their cries rising into one sound, until John’s cock bled warmth between them, Sherlock wringing him dry with each thrust. He soon came inside John as he ever had; overtaken by a tide of sentiment, rising high on the swell of emotion that inexplicably existed within him. John had shown him it needn’t be a weakness. John was remarkable. John was everything.

They came down from their orgasms together, nestled in each other’s arms as lungs caught wind and heartbeats slowed. Sherlock inhaled against John’s skin and basked in the chance to simply _be_ , freed from the bustle of his hyperactive brain. Eventually, he became aware of John lazily toying with his curls, his soft hums broken every now and then by a light, contented sigh.

Sherlock rose on his elbows and John gazed up at him from his bed of grass, tender-eyed and thoroughly drunk on love. Affection tugged deep in Sherlock’s chest. To look at him was a revelation.

The brightness had been restored to John’s eyes and, within them, Sherlock recognized the person with whom he had fallen in love.

John had not moved on. Not in the ways that mattered.

In his time away, Sherlock had heard stories. Tragic tales of misfortunate lovers and the agony of their circumstances. It had a name, this feeling.

 _True love_. A love that could not die, did not break, would not stop.

Death and time meant nothing. It was transcendent, and it was theirs.

A small smile touched John's lips, as if similar thoughts had crossed his own mind, and Sherlock leaned in to gently kiss him, hoping he understood just how profoundly he was loved.

 

* * *

 

It had never taken John so long to get dressed in his life.

For every sleeve he pulled on or trouser leg he got straightened, Sherlock distracted him with another lingering interlude, kissing and touching him as if they had only just reunited, and in the process undoing most of the headway John had made with his clothes. Sherlock was even more indifferent about his own state, and John resorted to tugging up his trousers for him while caught in a generous snog.

Truth be told, John couldn’t stop touching Sherlock either, as if breaking contact might reveal the whole thing to be a dream. But no, Sherlock was there before him, his curly hair blowing in the wind and his face adorned with a grin wider than Florin Channel.

John grimaced a little when they finally stood. He was going to be sore for days, and that was quite all right with him.

“All right?” Sherlock asked. He slipped his hands around John’s waist, bringing him close.

“I’ve had it worse,” John said, finding Sherlock’s lips for another quick kiss. “Mostly from you, actually.”

Sherlock gave a thoughtful hum. “I’ll strive to best myself, next time.”

“Not if I best you first," John slyly countered.

“Is that a challenge?”

“It certainly is.”

A frisson of heat seemed to pass between their eyes. The foreplay had already begun for the next time, and the time after that, and God, it was heaven to think of it. To _know_ there would be a next time because Sherlock wasn’t dead. He was here, safe in John’s embrace.

“I’ve missed you terribly, you know,” Sherlock quietly said.

John shifted his stance, disturbing the ache in his backside. “I think I figured that one out.”

They chuckled in unison, a balm to John’s weathered nerves. He stroked Sherlock’s silken shirt and kissed him once more, as a means of finally parting.

As Sherlock collected his sword and the rope from the hillside, John neatened his hair and enjoyed the fresh draft of sweet wind coming down from through the heather patches. He felt freer than he had in ages. Hopeful, joyous, and ferociously infatuated with the nearby idiot in the pirate disguise.

The thrill of the moment snapped as he scanned the edges of the ravine. John stopped, suddenly wary, as he watched something move silhouetted against the sky. A sinuous line of long-striding animals headed right in their direction, following the cross-country path they had taken up above.

“Sherlock,” John said in alarm, taking a step back.

Sherlock slung the coil of rope over his shoulder and turned, squinting up at the ridgeline. He glanced at John with concern. “It must be Moriarty.”

“We’re sitting targets, down here.”

“I know.”

“So where are we supposed to go?”

The prince and his riders would be on them before they could climb the steep incline of the hillside, and to the north was a dead end. Sherlock nodded toward the only other route: the southern outlet of the ravine, where the rocky stream emptied into a dark and desolate stretch of swampy land.

“The Great Grimpen Flame Mire,” Sherlock said, as if proposing a leisurely stroll.

From a young age, all Florinese children learned to fear the infamous flame mire of Guilder. It was said that nothing lived within its marshy stretches, save for the great bestial H.O.U.N.D.s and the thick, twisted grasses that drew nourishment from the drowned bodies of those who got lost in the fenland. Then there were the unpredictable jets of fire that burned men alive, the notorious sinkholes that swallowed entire wagons in less than a second, and the perilous winding paths that led to nowhere in particular. John recalled many sleepless nights as a young boy after his mother threatened to take him there as punishment for misbehavior.

To enter the mire was insanity of the highest order. John looked at Sherlock, wondering if he’d gone mad since they parted. “No one’s ever made it out alive."

“Then we’ll be the first,” he said. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” John instantly replied.

Sherlock took up his hand and flashed a dazzling smile. “Then _run_.”

That's exactly what they did.


	5. Chapter 5

Count Moran reined his horse sharply to a halt as he watched the two specks, one black and one orange-ish, hurtling down the confluence of the ravine. But his eyes had to be deceiving him, because surely they weren't... holding hands?

“They’re headed straight into the mire,” he called to the hunting party.

The horses assembled at the edge of the rocky precipice. The huntsmen glanced toward Prince Moriarty, unsure whether he intended to give chase into the marshland. Moran tipped his head to peer down the steep slopes. They'd need to find a traversable trail somewhere.

Anderson lifted in his saddle, shading his eyes and squinting. “Is that Prince John running with his abductor?”

“Coerced under threat of violence, no doubt,” Moran said, by way of excuse.

A thunderous scowl crossed Prince Moriarty’s face. His white stallion danced impatiently and he canted the beast around to face Moran.

"We’ll go around and intercept them,” the prince ordered. "I'll not risk the horses."

"What if they don't make it to the other side, my lord?" asked Anderson.

The prince’s eyes fixed upon the darker of the receding figures. "A clever man does not bet against the prize stallion. They’ll make it through. And when they do, our foe will wish the mire had claimed them.”

 

* * *

 

“Jesus!”

A pillar of flame belched into the air not a foot in front of John. He launched backward with a start, barely avoiding singing his eyebrows off. Heat radiated in scorching waves from the blue-streaked fire, and after five seconds the jet vanished as quickly as it had spouted.

John lowered his arm from where it shielded his eyes. In the hazy twilight dimness of the flame mire, the spots of fire were exceptionally bright. Sherlock helped him to his feet, patting down the front of his doublet.

“All right?” Sherlock asked. “Nothing burned?”

“I don’t think so.” John touched the still-warm fringe of his hair, just to be certain. “Anything missing?”

Sherlock cupped his chin and lifted it, examining John’s face with pale-eyed precision. “You’re a bit flushed, but I can’t tell whether it’s from a scalding or from me.”

John swatted his hand away. “Or, you know, the effort of running for our lives through a bloody mire.”

They looked in turn at the bog water bubbling and hissing where the flame spurt had arisen, like a vat of boiling acid. Such streamlets and pools pock-marked the fen, edged by clumps of bladed rushes and speargrass. The sky surged with low-lying clouds that blended with the surrounding landscape, creating a disorientating illusion that there was no horizon line. The soft, sucking earth attempted to swallow anything that came in contact; John had nearly lost a boot to its appetite.

He wrinkled his nose at the frothing water. “God, the stories never mentioned it smelt of rotten eggs.”

Sherlock lifted an eyebrow. “Neither did they mention how easily the phenomena is explained. Combustible gases rise through the ground water, you see? If enough friction is encountered as it bubbles to the surface, the result is a flame spurt. Simple.”

“What about the H.O.U.N.D.s?”

“Hounds of Un-Natural Dimensions?” Sherlock scoffed. “They’re just fairy stories to scare children. My only genuine concern is the sinkholes. Take care where you step.”

As Sherlock predicted, the Great Grimpen Flame Mire had successfully dissuaded Prince Moriarty’s pursuit. John glanced back toward the firmer ground of the ravine outlet, a shrouded wedge of distant green and grey, to again confirm their solitude. Impossibly, they’d done it. Another few hours crossing the mire and they’d safely reach the southern shores of Guilder.

And Sherlock was right; the terrors of the mire were surprisingly avoidable. But that didn’t change the general unpleasantness of the environment, nor the fatigue settling into John’s bones after an entire night and day of being kidnapped, resisting said kidnapping, finding out his love was alive after three years of presumed death, and topping it off with a good trudge through thick peaty soil.

As they started off again, John shot a sidelong look to the black half-mask stuffed into Sherlock’s sash. He gingerly tugged the dangling tail of fabric. "If I might ask, what in God's name are you wearing?"

Sherlock’s curls had quite recovered from the oppression of the mask, bouncing lightly as he smirked at John. "Dramatic flair is the first secret to becoming a successful pirate."

"And what's the second?"

"Reputation. I don't have to kill anyone as long they _think_ I'll do it."

John shook his head, amazed. “So you really _are_ the Dread Pirate Redbeard.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“If you’d expressly come to rescue me, why the disguise?”

Sherlock casually shifted the loop of rope coiled over his shoulder. “Originally I planned on kidnapping you, much as Hope did. The mask was a precaution to preserve my identity in case of witnesses. You were taken before I could reach you, however, and the disguise continued to prove useful for that same reason.”

“But why not reveal yourself once we were together?”

Sherlock came to a standstill. His brows furrowed as if considering a distasteful thought, his expression muted. “I wasn’t sure whether you were the same person I left behind at Master Stamford’s hospital. I was collecting data before deciding one way or the other.”

John knew for a fact he wasn’t the same person. Wearier, more jaded, and wiser in the unfair ways of the world, but no less in love than the day he declared himself to Sherlock. It hurt that Sherlock had doubted him. “And what would you have done if you’d found me wanting?”

“Seen you safely home and left you to your new life, I suppose.” Sherlock’s impossibly beautiful eyes rose to meet his gaze. He took John’s hand. “In hindsight, I’m not sure I could have done that. Come so close and not allowed myself to touch you one last time.”

John swallowed past the thickness in his throat. The rush of frantic passion brought on by their reunion had ebbed enough to grant him a bit of clarity of mind. He struggled for logic around the addictive presence of Sherlock, always had, but now he sensed something between them. A thorn in John’s skin keeping him at bay.

Sherlock seemed to notice this apprehension. His fingers twined between John’s, but he did not attempt to move closer as he normally would. In the past, fending off Sherlock when he had a mind for intimate contact had been as futile as stopping the sun from rising. John adored it, then; adored being the unshakeable center of his universe, if only for a fleeting time. Now it felt as if a river divided them, the tide speedily surging.

Sherlock retreated a few inches, and John could see the spark of deduction spinning through his eyes, unraveling John’s uncustomary reticence and calculating a resolution. Fixing things was Sherlock’s life work. John only wished he knew what it was that had broken between them.

“Shall I relay the tale of my captainship?” Sherlock offered, picking up a healthy pace across the murky stretch of mire.

“Certainly,” John said as he followed, glad for the distraction.

“What I told you before, about the attack on the ship and pleading for my life. That was the truth. Redbeard saved me for last, considering my plea as he did away with the others. I gained his favor by proving his ship’s quartermaster had been stealing supplies and selling them at port. To endanger the crew is a serious offense, and so the quartermaster was executed on the spot. Then Redbeard pointed out that there was a new vacancy onboard, and that he could use a man of my talents. He asked whether I’d prefer to take the position or die.”

“So you joined up,” John said, frowning at the churning of the pool to his left. He casually diverted his course to dodge the jet of fire that shot upward a moment later, bathing them in chemically discolored light. “That explains why your body was never found. I thought he’d tossed you into the ocean.”

“The crew nearly did, on many occasions. I became a favorite for Redbeard’s entertainment when I wasn’t scrubbing the holds or mending the nets. He had me stand in attendance during elaborate dinners in his private cabin and deduce his officers. Eventually, he trusted me enough to grant me more important duties as his valet. I accompanied him during negotiations, trade agreements, meetings with local authorities. Anywhere I might be useful in working out the truth of things. We became friends, after a fashion.”

Sherlock crossed the petrified length of an ancient log, scummed over by wet black mosses stinking of rot. The trunk wobbled precariously beneath John’s boot soles as he followed, and he ignored Sherlock’s proffered arm as a guide to safer ground.

“One day he summoned me for a private audience in his cabin and for the first time requested that I deduce _him_. I had known since the start that he wasn’t actually the Dread Pirate Redbeard – the original one, at least – and I told him as much. He laughed, of course, and said it was true. His name was Trevor and he’d inherited the title from the previous Redbeard, who wasn’t the originator either. The real Redbeard was a ship’s dog, he claimed, dead some eighteen years, who was renowned for mauling the captain’s enemies in battle. Stories spread and Redbeard’s legend transformed him into a human pirate lord, a persona which was adopted by the beast’s owner.”

“God,” John snorted. “Imagine that! The most fearsome pirate of the age. A _dog_.”

“Intelligent and loyal creatures, dogs,” Sherlock noted. “What surprised me most, however, was that Trevor intended to retire and pass the title on to me. I was stunned, as you might imagine, but saw my opportunity to regain my freedom of will. At the next port we recruited a new crew, with Trevor staying on as my first mate and calling me Redbeard. It wasn’t long before the crew believed. Trevor made his farewells and I, the newly minted Dread Pirate Redbeard, was left in charge of the _Revenge_.”

He turned to John. “That was twenty-nine days ago. The moment I had my crew to myself, I thrilled them with the prospect of a prince’s ransom and ordered we set sail for Florin as fast as the winds would take us.”

“And here you are,” John said.

“Here I am.”

“A bloody pirate.”

Sherlock shrugged. “The profession has its charms, but you should know I don’t intend to go back.”

John quirked an amused eyebrow. “You’ll give up being a pirate lord after only twenty-nine days? Think of all the treasure.”

Sherlock reached out to brush several fingers through the blond strands of John’s hair. “There is only one sort of gold I seek,” he said, hushed with intent. “I am done with pirating for the foreseeable future.”

John nearly leaned into his touch, wanting more than anything to not see the attempt at reconnection for what it was. A gesture, a manipulation, all to get John to come around. There was a time he’d have fallen for it like a trout on a line, but the past three years had extinguished that naiveté. Perhaps, with this second chance, his newfound wisdom might be enough to keep Sherlock alive.

“Your crew never realized you’re too young to be the Redbeard of legend?” John asked.

His strategy routed, Sherlock let his hand fall away from its place behind John’s ear. His eyes darted around in search of a new point of attack. “You’d be surprised at the perceptual failings among otherwise functional people,” he said. “For instance, did you notice your limp had gone?”

John looked down at his leg in dumb-founded shock. He stood levelly, his weight distributed in an even share between each booted foot. The ache in his thigh had vanished.

“Oh my God, you fixed it!” John exclaimed, breathless, as he flexed the formerly injured muscles. “It’s a trick!”

Sherlock made a dismissive noise and folded his arms behind his back. “I did nothing of the sort, save for distracting you.”

"How—how did you—?"

“It was all in your head. You forgot about it after I revealed myself.”

As impossible as it sounded, it appeared Sherlock was correct. It wasn’t a war wound; at least, not in the physical sense. John had run on it for the past several hours without the slightest discomfort.

“Shall we press on?” Sherlock asked, the mildness of his tone doing nothing to hide how terribly pleased he was with himself.

“You’d make for a brilliant doctor if you had half a whit of patience to learn,” John said.

“If every prescription involved bedding you, I might just be obliged,” Sherlock mused as they began walking again. “Anyway, the patience to _learn_ is not the problem. I enjoyed quite the education in my time away.”

“Did you, now?”

Sherlock whipped round to walk backward, his eyes lighting up and his hands growing animated. “Oh, it was remarkable, John! I trained with sword and pistol, learnt the finer points of navigation by sea, picked up new languages and customs. Did you know there are cultures in which the women form the warrior class? I discovered folk healers selling plants and poisons I’d never known existed. I evaded royal privateers through pitch-black straits, guided by the stars alone. The nature of haggling and bartering, of blending in with baser peoples, how to avoid drawing attention to myself. Things I’d never learn in Florin.”

John listened to Sherlock’s enthusiastic descriptions with what felt like a stone lodged in his throat. When he spoke again, his words bit. “Is that why you didn’t come back?”

Sherlock stopped walking. John stopped too, but could not bring himself to turn and look at him. They had reached an island of firm footing amidst the bog; a rise of dry earth adorned with a single dead, leafless tree. By its size, it had once inexplicably flourished in the soured waters of the marshland.  

“I thought of you constantly,” Sherlock said. “More than once I’d have given anything to have you at my side, even for a moment.”

John’s left hand squeezed into a fist. “’More than once’. I’m living my worst nightmare and you manage to spare a thought for me every now and then."

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Tell me, then, what did you mean?” John shouted, spinning around. “Tell me how you suffered between your fascinating lessons and thrilling experiences and bloody pirates and oh, that’s right, the person you left behind and who couldn’t possibly be perishing of grief, inch by inch. Because every morning it felt like someone tore out my heart and set it to flame before my eyes. I _died_ , Sherlock. I was dead until a few hours ago.”

Sherlock’s eyes went luminous with shock. “John, you are not a passing thought that blows through my mind like an occasional gust of wind. You are everything, everywhere, in every choice I make and every breath I draw. You are my constant; the point around which my life pivots. I’ve already told you that my singular goal during my captivity was to gain back my personal autonomy. And perhaps I might have done so sooner had I not _you_ to consider. I asked you to allow me to take a risk before I departed, and it is obvious to both of us that my promises were rendered worthless by misfortune and circumstance. There were opportunities to escape, but they involved considerable risks to my person, of which I knew you would disapprove greatly. So I did as you – the voice of my conscience – commanded. I waited and I gained their trust, to the point where I was named Redbeard himself. Does my intact return not please you? Would I have been better off to survive my capture just to die without you ever knowing?”

John did not respond, because what could he say? The ache of old bereavement was still fresh in his chest and here Sherlock claimed it was for John’s benefit.

“I admit I hadn’t realized how my absence would affect you,” Sherlock went on, quieter than before. “I imagined you’d be waiting there, unchanged, perhaps angered by my delay, but also relieved in some ways— “

“ _Relieved_ ,” John hissed. “You colossal, towering _idiot_.”

A shade of ruefulness touched Sherlock’s expression. It softened him, somehow, as one who knows he has much to answer for. “It can’t be easy, John. Tying yourself to me.”

His blood felt as if it might boil straight out of his veins. His knuckles hurt from clenching. How was it he’d found the absolute thickest genius on the face of the earth?

“You bloody fool. This?” John said, moving forward to broach the space between them. “This is the easiest decision I’ve made in my entire life. It wasn’t even deciding, not really. It was arriving.”

Sherlock’s pale gaze was trained upon John, unshakable in its fixation, and it appeared he had been struck to genuine silence. Was this news to him? Had John not spelled it out clearly enough? They were standing nearly chest to chest, Sherlock staring as if John had abruptly sprouted wings and took flight before his eyes. John’s heartbeat skipped in its rhythm for the first time since the night he’d thought he lost Sherlock.

As a rule, close proximity to Sherlock Holmes had never recommended itself to the more rational displays of John’s nature. This fact was made worse by an extended deprivation, in which time John had apparently forgot the potent effects of merely existing in Sherlock’s presence. So when Sherlock touched him, the slightest sensation of fingertips pressing at his waist, John did not pull away. A fly could no sooner escape its sweet, ecstatic death trapped within the honey pot.

"Forgive me, John,” Sherlock softly said. “For everything."

Anger and passion enjoyed little separation in the mind of John Watson, and so it will come as no surprise that, rather than strike out at Sherlock, John opted instead for a furious kiss.

The dead tree creaked as Sherlock collided with it, driven backward by the force of John’s assault. His mouth was yielding and warm and more than willing to comply with John’s direction, and it became all grasping hands and dark silk and dark curls. Sherlock was solid beneath John’s fingers, the wood behind him wobbling from the strain, the lines of his face and body a dredged-up memory that John still hesitated to accept. He’d spent three long years living with a dead man. What would it take to make him real again?

He was angry. He was _furious_. The rage coiled inside his chest as he pulled and plucked and sucked on the soft give of Sherlock's lips, gulping down his panted breaths, devouring him, refusing to relent. Sherlock embraced the rough treatment; his strong hands tugged at John’s collar and twisted in John’s hair, pulling him close in a fierce bid for more.

There came an urgent need for air, and John found his breath in the well of Sherlock’s throat. His shaking palms slid down the silky trail of Sherlock’s chest. Their thighs met and John couldn’t prevent an instinctual grinding against the line of his hip. Sherlock’s breath prickled across John’s skin as he intentionally pressed into John’s firming erection.

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock husked against his ear, hot and needy. “John, _please_ …”

Whether he was asking again for forgiveness or requesting something more, John couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. They spoke in touch as much as they did in words, and for all the times John had told Sherlock he loved him, he never felt its meaning sing as strongly as those intimate moments of pure passion, when he bared his beating heart and gave it utterly away.

The white hot flames of anger receded. He looked up and found Sherlock’s gaze had grown heavy and hypnotized. John’s hands wandered down, past the arch of his spine and over his hipbones, down the curve of toned musculature.

Sherlock’s arse had always been a work of art. John’s breathing slowed as he weighed Sherlock’s meaning.

Sex rarely crossed his mind in the past three years. He supposed he’d never expected to lie with anyone else; how could they possibly live up to what he’d lost? But it seemed his libido had woken from its hibernation, ready and more than eager.

The edge of Sherlock’s mouth quirked faintly. He read John’s mounting arousal with the ease of long experience. Sherlock twisted himself around in John’s arms so that his chest scraped against the flaking bark of the tree.

He was offering himself as an apology. A penitence. An outlet for John to work through his temper.

John’s fingers quivered as they traced the solid contour of his waist. He wanted Sherlock to feel what he’d done. To feel in his flesh every second John spent needlessly mourning him. He wanted to let loose like some damned rutting beast and take back that which had been denied him. He wanted to feel Sherlock begging and breathless beneath him, crying out for his touch. Only his.

He wanted all of that. Frighteningly so.

But not like this.

John settled his forehead between Sherlock’s shoulder blades and concentrated on loosening his grip on Sherlock’s hip bones. He let out a long, shaking breath as the need to _take_ without discrimination burned within his chest like a honed blade, urging him, demanding to wrest control from the rational.

John dropped his hands away from Sherlock’s waist and took a flustered step back. Sherlock was right. He did need an outlet, but he wasn’t about to desecrate his most personal expression of love and devotion for the sake of quelling his temper. He needed air. He needed space—

A hand caught his. John looked up. Pale, worried irises were fixed on him.

“John,” Sherlock said.

They were both breathing heavily. He would only touch Sherlock out of love. Anything else was unacceptable.

Sherlock seemed to sense the conflict warring inside John. He ought to have taken his space, allowed John’s anger to fester alone and safely contained. But something had changed in the distance between them.

John saw fear in Sherlock’s eyes. True, confounding, bone-shaking fear that John no longer wanted nor cared for him. His touch rebuffed, his offer declined. Utter rejection.

The pain is John’s chest took on a new shape. It twisted and knotted and somehow, it hurt all the worse. None of this was all right. It was the farthest bloody thing from all right. His own angry impulses, John could face. But for Sherlock to question John’s feelings for him – that was unconscionable. Unwilling to tolerate such a thought a moment longer, John closed the gap to kiss him.

Sherlock melted into him, as a man sinking finally clinging to a raft. John smothered him with attention, gripping onto him as if the mere force of his touch might impart the fervor of his feelings. The lovable, terrible, idiot man he’d never bear to be without.

Sherlock seemed to get the intent of his message, because John’s trousers were stiflingly tight and Sherlock’s hands were at the laces, tugging them apart. John moaned into Sherlock’s mouth as his fingers reached bare skin, huffing a number of ragged, desperate breaths as Sherlock weighed the undeniable evidence of his ardor within one warm palm.

He began stroking John slowly. It was nearly enough to buckle his knees. John grasped at Sherlock’s shirt as a deep, unrecognizable sound unfurled from his own throat.

Sherlock’s familiar scent, so long out of John’s reach, enveloped him like a noxious drug. His small gasping sighs, the way his hands shook as they molded to John’s body, the thousand tiny beautiful details of him that John had never thought to experience again. How had he lived without this passion filling him daily?

The answer was he hadn’t, of course. Sherlock brought him back to life in unfathomable ways. John breathed him. John needed him. In his bones, in his blood. A love set to shatter him no matter what he did.

Suddenly his hands were thumbing Sherlock’s trousers past the girth of his thighs, pressing until Sherlock’s back scuffed against the coarse bark of the tree. Heat filled Sherlock’s eyes as John nudged him into place, directing him as he liked, the heat of Sherlock’s erection pressing against John’s hip.

John brought them together in the firm grip of one fist and a rushing tingle danced up and down his spine. Heat bled between his fingers and he stroked methodically, watching Sherlock closely. A flush had spread high on his cheeks and he groaned, his knuckles white where they gripped John’s doublet.

Sherlock’s mouth fell open with a whimpering sigh and God, Sherlock had to know. He had to understand. About everything; the whole of John’s passion and his pain. John’s hand between them had grown slick and frantic and he felt Sherlock’s fingers meet his, taking hold and guiding him, and his cock was suddenly sliding between the clamped weight of his thighs, gloriously tight.

Instinct overcame him and John was lost to it, thrusting like a stag in rut. He kissed Sherlock roughly as he took his pleasure, blind to everything but the need to get it out. The rage, the sorrow, three years of hopelessness and guilt. All the hours weeping silently by night and crowding away dark thoughts by day. He’d wished over and over for Sherlock’s return from the grave, and here he had it in his hands and felt, more than anything, hurt.

Climax arrived in a sear of white. John buried himself against Sherlock’s shoulder, the silky material clinging to the sweat on his forehead and soaking with humid breath. His head spun with release and perhaps he heard himself let out a sob once or twice, expunging the last of the burden he’d carried for so very long.

He didn’t feel the arms around him until a short time later. When he raised his head Sherlock kissed him, full-mouthed, and the world became a flurry of fingers buried in hair and hands wrapping around necks and the furious press of tongue and teeth.

Finally they parted, just far enough to husk warmth against one another. Sherlock’s eyes were on him. A question lingered there.

“John,” he said, soft and broken.

Whatever Sherlock wanted, whatever the cost or the pain; did he not know John would always freely give it?

Three years of walking the earth as a dead man. John would bear a hundred thousand more if it meant feeling Sherlock in this way. Warm against him. Breathing. _Alive_.

“Of course I forgive you,” John murmured into his shoulder. “Of course I do.”

A silent quiver shook through Sherlock’s body. His eyes were damp.

John kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

 

* * *

 

They lingered there together longer than they should have, but John needed the rest.

John breathed gently as he dozed propped against the tree. Sherlock lay tucked beside him, head pillowed against soft leather, attempting to remain vigilant despite the lulling rise and fall of John’s chest. Here, in wrapped in mutual possession, not even the ever-present shadow of boredom could reach him.

He’d taken something as simple as John’s scent for granted. The steady rhythm of his pulse. The length of his eyelashes, the growth pattern of the stubble coming in over his jaw. The way his hand nestled perfectly within Sherlock’s. All things Sherlock had noticed at one point or another, of course, but shed in a light of new importance.

John. He had all of John now, body and soul. Nothing would change that. John had forgiven him.

Sherlock closed his eyes and listened to John’s heartbeat beneath his ear. The heart that John had declared to be his, all those years ago. Locked inside and safely beating.

The rumble of thunder overhead and the faint pattering of raindrops on dry branches roused John from his rest. He drew in a long breath and shifted his shoulders, cracking the joints and stretching as he stirred from his uncomfortable lean against the dead tree.

“Ready?” John murmured into the crown of Sherlock’s head.

Sherlock glanced up as a cold droplet landed on his forehead. “Ready.”

They greying haze of the mire rolled thick upon the distance. The sky was hidden but Sherlock was relatively sure night had fallen. The pools and patches of speargrass glowed in the eerie light of phosphorescent chemical fires and the mist-shrouded moon.

Sherlock caught John wincing as he stood. He smirked as he slid the coil of rope onto his shoulder. “No one since me?” he teased.

“It seems my body wants to make up for lost time,” John said.

“I’ll have you back in fighting form soon enough.”

“And you’re the war, are you?” John huffed softly. “Sounds about right.”

They descended the dry stony knoll toward the muck-ridden bog. The water had risen or else it was a particularly low-lying section of the mire; Sherlock picked out the firmest ground he could find but it was slow going on the whole.

“How far to the other side?” John asked as they trudged single-file.

“I’ve no idea," Sherlock said. "I’d hoped to reach the coast by morning. If we’re still headed generally south.”

“This place is a bloody maze,” John complained.

It was certainly an apt observation. The mire seemed to stretch out infinitely in all directions, disappearing into the murk. The rain fluctuated between a mist and drizzle, and Sherlock couldn't be entirely sure the water wasn't somehow coming up from below rather than sprinkling down onto them.

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder as he hopped onto a stout-looking mound of weedy clumps. “Why do you suppose Hope and his minions kidnapped you?”

John chuckled.

“What? Why are you laughing?”

He shook his head. “Always searching for a mystery, aren’t you?”

“It’s an entirely valid line of inquiry, John.”

“No, I shouldn’t laugh. The thought did cross my mind.”

“And you can’t think of a single person who’d want to harm you?”

“I can think of loads," John shrugged. "Most of them live in this very kingdom. It’s no secret there are tensions with Guilder, or that I’ve become a political target. But personal vendettas? Not really.”

“It wasn’t the Guilderians,” Sherlock said. “They staged it to look that way, but it wasn’t them.”

“What do you mean?”

The sounds of John's footsteps had ceased. Sherlock turned to face him, relatively hopeful that the mushy ground beneath their boots was fit for standing. Bog waters churned and gurgled amongst the stringy grasses.

“Hope took pains to ensure the trail led to Guilder," Sherlock explained. "If a Florinese guard detail had come across the scene of your kidnapping, it would leave very little doubt for political motivations.”

John frowned. “We ought to inform the prince.”

“Are you so convinced he’s not in on it? Everyone's a suspect until proven otherwise, John, including the prince.”

His head tilted skeptically. “He’s been nothing but gracious to me since you left. If they’re targeting me they’ll definitely have their eye on the true members of the royal family. We ought to tell him, or the king, or Mary at the very least.”

“Mary,” Sherlock said.

“Yes," John insisted. "She’s clever and capable and she’ll see justice done.”

He didn't speak.

John blinked as the silence grew expansive. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock frowned slightly.

John came closer, his brows drawing together. “Sherlock, you don’t think I’d still marry her? Not after everything that’s just happened?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he said. “All my predictions went grievously wrong.”

“The only future I want is right here in front of me. Isn't that what you want as well?”

“Since the day I first set eyes on you,” Sherlock said.

A thoughtful pout pressed at John's mouth. His looked so very sincere as he touched Sherlock's forearm. “About what you said before. About doubting whether I still loved you. You need never think otherwise. Not for an instant.”

Sherlock's fingers had somehow found their way to John's. "The whole world's discovered how wonderful you are. You're not mine any longer."

"When you were gone forever, I was yours,” John said. “No matter what titles they give me, I _am_ yours. Before anything else, now and always, I will be yours."

His words left Sherlock speechless. His eyes were warm and searching. Sherlock gently slid his hand to John's wrist and felt the steady pulse beneath his skin, attesting to the truth of what he said. Beneath Sherlock’s fingers thrummed the beat of the heart he’d come to possess. Somehow. Inexplicably.

“All right?” John whispered.

Sherlock nodded as he released John’s wrist. “All right.”

In the dimness behind John, something moved. Sherlock’s gaze flickered up long enough to register its shape.

“John,” he said, staying perfectly still.

“Yes?”

“Do you recall what I told you about H.O.U.N.D.s?”

“They’re fairy stories meant to frighten children,” John said.

Sherlock’s eyes darted down to meet John’s. “My conclusions might have proven… premature.”

John planted a steady hand on Sherlock’s left hip. “Where?” he breathed.

“Directly behind you.”

In a sharp rasp of steel, John drew Sherlock’s rapier from its sheath and spun fluidly around.

John lifted the sword just in time for the beast to leap from the darkness beyond, knocking him to the ground and striking Sherlock on the way. Sherlock landed in a patch of dark speargrass, which sliced his sleeves and snagged the rope from his shoulder as he rolled aside and back onto his feet.

The H.O.U.N.D. was enormous; nearly twice as long as John and rippling with thick fur-covered musculature. Phosphorescence steamed off its hide like warm peat in wintertime, giving the creature an eerie silhouette. Its shoulder blades flexed as it circled round, growling in unearthly tones and baring its fangs like a great grinning demon.

“Sherlock,” John shouted, raising the sword again. “Run!”

It was a dueling weapon, not the sturdy long sword John required to make quick work of the beast, and Sherlock would be damned if he was going to abandon him to the creature’s mercy.

“Not going to happen,” Sherlock said.

The H.O.U.N.D. lunged again and John dove aside as Sherlock retrieved the coil of rope that had fallen. John got several quick slashes in as he scrambled away, but the superficial injuries failed to deter the beast. It stalked toward John on massive paws, its hide oozing blood. Sherlock began looping the thick weave of the rope, tying it off to form a snare that might entangle the beast and allow John to drive home a killing blow. He tightened the knot and gave himself plenty of slack before flinging it at the H.O.U.N.D.’s massive body. It caught round the neck and one foreleg and Sherlock pulled as hard as he could, forcing the creature away from John. It snarled again, its silver-edged fangs protruding, and nipped at the rope as its paws dragged through the sticky mud. John stabbed it in its flank and the beast howled. Sherlock yanked again, trying to pull it off its feet so that John might have a go at the underbelly, but the beast’s eyes blazed with a glow of fury and instead fixated on Sherlock.

Sherlock had only a moment to release the line before the H.O.U.N.D. slammed into him, knocking him over in a flailing mass of hot stinking breath and slimed muscle and sharp, digging claws. Sherlock raised his forearms to defend himself against the animal. Fangs sank into his shoulder and Sherlock cried out.

The H.O.U.N.D. abruptly shrieked, its razor teeth gone from Sherlock’s arm, and it scampered off him like a frightened pup. Sherlock lay panting in the muck and saw John standing over him, the sword bloody, and a frightful ferocity in his eyes. John turned round and raised the sword as the H.O.U.N.D. shook itself ten feet off. It was limping badly, dragging the loop of rope behind it, but rather than be scared off the beast seemed to bristle with provocation, driven by some hellish resentment and God’s own wrath.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” John growled at the beast.

They collided in a flurry of fur and bloody steel. Sherlock raised his head, heart pounding and shoulder burning, and clawed at the wet grass until he pulled himself onto his side. The combatants were a shapeless moonlit blur, a great mane outlined against the sky as it bent downward, jaws viciously snapping. John, God, he must be dying...

Then the point of the blade suddenly erupted from the scruff of H.O.U.N.D.’s neck. The creature let out a piercing, half-formed howl and quivered violently before slumping forward and died.

All was silent on the moorland, save for the wind in the grasses and the light rain upon the waterways.

“John!” Sherlock called, wounded and weary and heart filling his throat.

The great carcass of the H.O.U.N.D. shifted. It shuddered once or twice, and then John crawled out from beneath it. He was smeared with the beast’s blood and gasping for breath, but he smiled as he surveyed his field of victory.

“All right?” John asked.

Sherlock nodded, holding his injured arm as he pushed himself upright. He rose and took a wobbly step. But the soft silt beneath his boots collapsed suddenly away.

The muck sucked him down and in a second he was up to his armpits in a flood of murky water quickly filling the hole. A sinkhole, he realized, as he shouted and scrabbled for dry earth, solid earth, any earth. John was on his feet but it was too late; the vacuum of a gaping hole beneath the ground was consuming water and mud and everything in its vortex.

"John!" Sherlock screamed as it dragged him under. The last thing he saw was John’s panicked face as he dashed across the sinking plain.

He thrashed and fought and drifted downward for what felt like ages. Moonlight incandesced the murky sky above; cracks of light distilled and distorted by the marshwater. The brown dark surrounded him, filling him, his lungs and mouth as his ribs seized with the loss of air. The water was warmer down below. A gentle smothering heat to cradle his vacant flesh for all eternity. Sherlock closed his eyes as darkness came.

Something tightened around his right wrist. It was a distant feeling, hardly anything at all, but it squeezed and tugged relentlessly. There was a rush of water past his skin and the sensation of buoyancy. Freezing air hit him. The squelch of slippery mud sliding beneath his spine, the far away huffing of another living body.

He was on his back and the blurred marshlight haloed John’s head, his blond hair spiked with dampness.

"I'm not bloody losing you _again_ ," John vowed as he pumped his hands against Sherlock’s chest.

Sherlock coughed up a lungful of bracken water. He gagged on the gravelly texture of mud in his throat. John’s fingers were in his mouth, wiping away the dregs, and Sherlock coughed and coughed until his lungs ached.

“Sherlock?" John said, barely suppressing the panic in his voice. "Sherlock, breath for me, love.”

He coughed again but managed a long, rattling intake of breath at the end of it. His chest expanded and the cool sensation of air inside him did wonders for his spinning head. Sherlock blinked and breathed, John’s shadowed face close at hand and watching him.

"John,” he rasped.

"Oh, thank God," John sighed. The tension flooded from his shoulders and he seemed to lose half his height. He brushed away the drape of Sherlock's damp fringe. "Christ, you scared me."

"John," Sherlock said, reaching for him. "Are you—"

"I'm fine," John assured him. He touched Sherlock's bitten shoulder and frowned. "Which is more than I can say for you."

Sherlock turned his head and tried flexing his shoulder. The joint was stiff and he winced with the pain of it.

“A few punctures,” John said. “Bleeding, but not as badly as I feared. Hold still.”

He yanked off Sherlock’s torn shirtsleeve and proceeded to carefully wrap the wound with the fabric. He tied it off and checked the job.

“It’s not clean, but it should stop the bleeding," John said. "I’ll dress it properly once we reach civilization.”

John leaned away and Sherlock saw the length of rope he’d used on the H.O.U.N.D. tied about John’s waist. The line snaked through the grass to where it was lashed round a dead stump, tilted so its roots were visible on one side. Obviously John’s quick thinking had facilitated the rescue effort; without it, any attempt at retrieving Sherlock would have ended with both of them sucked into the bowels of the sinkhole.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said.

John followed his gaze to the rope and he began loosening the knot. “No need for thanks. You’d be dead if you hadn’t thought to bring it along.”

“All the same, John. Thank you.”

John smiled and tossed away the sodden rope. “Now I know you’re not all right.”

Sherlock coughed again and rose up on his good arm. John pushed him back down.

“No, don’t get up,” John said. “Rest for now. We’ve got plenty of time.”

“We don’t,” Sherlock said.

“I know, but I’m a doctor now and you’ve got to do what I say.”

“Have I?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock wasn't in any state to protest as John sidled up behind him, tucking an arm round his chest. They were both soaked through and beginning to shiver. Sherlock closed his eyes as the comforting warmth of John’s body was shared with him.

“You know that cottage of ours?” John said through chattering teeth. “The one you talked about, years ago?”

“Mm?” Sherlock hummed.

“Let’s build it far from any mires. Or cliffs. And maybe not near any ravines.”

“We’ll build it wherever you like, John.”

“Good.”

“But somewhere with a proper climate for the bees.”

“Mm.”

“And near a village where you can practice without being away for long.”

John laughed into Sherlock’s shoulder. “Don’t think you’ll grow tired and want to be rid of me, then?”

“Never,” said Sherlock. “Never, if I have anything to say about it.”

“Rest now, love,” John said, a giggle still in his voice. "We'll sort it all out tomorrow. A new day. A new life."

Soon the misting rain stopped and the clouds above parted, revealing a twinkling array of stars in the nighttime heavens. Sherlock gazed upon them, John warm at his back, and thanked each and every one of them for bringing him John Watson.

 

* * *

 

Count Moran was scanning the misty morning tree line from horseback when the shout rang out.

"We've spotted them! My lord, we've spotted them!"

Moran dropped the gloved hand shading his eyes from the bright beams of sunrise through the maples. He reined his horse around to see Anderson and the other members of the hunting party galloping his direction, arms aloft and waving to catch their attention.

He looked at Prince Moriarty, saddled beside him. "Shall we confront them now, my prince, or track them for a while and find a secluded spot?"

Prince Moriarty rolled his eyes. "Really, Seb. In _Guilder_ , of all places? I thought you'd had your heart set."

"True," he said, and at once they were off cantering toward their party.

They'd ridden through the night to circumnavigate the Great Grimpen Flame Mire. It had been a cold, unpleasant slog and Moran was more than ready to return to the comforts of his home back in Florin. The prince was right; he did have his heart set on getting someone back to his workshop. Candidates for experimentation that no one would miss were few and far between these days.

Sure as Anderson had said, they soon came upon the absconding duo of the man all in black and Doctor Watson. They started running hand-in-hand as the sound of hoof beats drew closer, their clothes torn and muddied, and evidence of exhaustion in their movements. In moments the hunters had them surrounded, swords out and bows raised. Moran and the prince trotted their horses forward to greet them.

They were both breathing heavily from running. The man in black had drawn the sword from his hip to ward off the prince's men. He eyed the prince with a particular unsavory look that Moran much disfavored. One of his shirtsleeves had been removed to bandage the shoulder, but he looked healthy overall. A fine specimen.

The doctor's clothing had remnants of blood streaked through with the mud, as if he'd tried to wash it off with fetid water. He stood behind the man in black and appeared far more anxious, his eyes darting quickly around.

“Well, well. Isn’t this a darling sight,” said Prince Moriarty, leaning across his saddle. “I never would have imagined it! An outlaw taking a liking to our beloved Prince John. Could you have imagined it, Seb?”

Moran sniffed. “Hardly, my prince.”

"Step aside," ordered the man in black. He angled his sword. "Allow us to pass or face the consequences."

“Consequences?" the prince scoffed. " _Consequences_?"

"Step aside or I'll run you through, one by one," said the man in black. "We've defeated your sorry excuse for criminal conspirators and are more than happy to retreat into the flame mire if need be."

Prince Moriarty shook his head, blithely innocent. "The only criminal conspirator I see is _you_ , I'm afraid. Seb, what’s the punishment for kidnapping a soon-to-be-member of the royal family of Florin?”

“Death, my prince,” Moran replied.

Prince Moriarty shrugged. “Death. There we have it.”

The man in black scowled. "You can try your best. I'm not afraid to die."

“Wait!” called Doctor Watson. The bows retreated slightly as he stepped forward, past the man in black, to approach the prince. “He’s not guilty, your highness. He didn’t kidnap me. Well, he did, but only after I was already kidnapped.”

The prince shook his head and sighed. “I fear he’s been caught red-handed, pet. I couldn’t possibly let him live.”

"I _chose_ to—"

"Do you think it matters what you chose?" Prince Moriarty interrupted. "All that matters is how it _looks_ , in the end. I am bound by duty to retrieve you and exact justice for crimes committed. What would the people of Florin think if I allowed him to live?"

Panic danced through Doctor Watson's eyes. “I’ll go with you," he abruptly said. "A trade. Me for him.”

“John, shut up!” called the man in black.

“No,” he said, glancing back before returning his gaze to the prince. “Your highness, his name is Sherlock and he saved me from my true abductors. Allow him to go free and I’ll gladly return with you. He’s a sailor on the ship _Revenge_. Return him there and I’ll do whatever you wish.”

“John,” pleaded the man in black. “ _Don’t_.”

Prince Moriarty considered this offer. Moran watched as the brilliant workings of his mind flashed in his eyes while he examined the angles opportunities presented.

"Agreed," said the prince. He glanced up. "Take him."

The nearby riders snapped their reins to urge their horses forward, and in instant the man in black – Sherlock – was there beside Doctor Watson, anguish lighting his eyes. 

The doctor reached up to touch his face. “I can’t watch you die again," he murmured. "I can’t. And if this is what it takes to save you…”

Sherlock grabbed at him. “Don’t trust him, John. Not for a moment!”

The doctor looked to the prince. "You won't harm him? You promise?"

The prince placed a hand over his heart. "By my word as the son of the king, I shall not harm him."

Two of the mounted man came and pulled Doctor Watson up to sit behind one saddle. Moriarty nodded as soon as he was settled and they kicked their stirrups and rode off as one, the prince at the head, leaving behind Moran and two of his more trustworthy lieutenants.

Moran glanced at the prisoner. Sherlock had dropped his sword, the pain in his gaze vanished as if it had never existed. He was now looking at Moran with an infuriatingly tranquil curiosity.

“What are you staring at?” demanded Moran.

“I couldn’t help notice that positively roguish scar over your right eye,” Sherlock said, folding his arms behind his back. “It’s quite becoming. I shouldn’t think I know of someone who might be terribly interested to learn of it. Do you frequent the French countryside, my lord?”

Moran struck him across the head with the hilt of his sword. The blow knocked the man unconscious and he crumpled where he stood, into the scattered leaves of the forest floor.

“Bring him to the workshop,” Moran ordered, sheathing his weapon.

One of the huntsman frowned. “But my lord, the prince said—”

“The prince promised not to harm him. He made no such promise regarding _me_.”


End file.
